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Election 2021: Candidates of color made history

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Election 2021: Candidates of color made history

People of color made history on election night in 2021, bringing diversity to leadership roles in some of America’s biggest cities, and in some states as well.

Boston, New York, Pittsburgh and Dearborn, Mich., were among the places that a majority of voters embraced minority candidates.

Michelle Wu is the first woman and person of color to be elected Boston’s mayor

The city councilor and daughter of Taiwanese immigrants broke Boston’s 199-year streak of white, male city leaders. She defeated fellow Democratic City Councilor Annissa Essaibi George, a self-described first-generation Arab-Polish American.

Pittsburgh elects Ed Gainey, the city’s first Black mayor ever

The western Pennsylvania metropolis, which is 23% Black, largely favored the Democrat Gainey over Republican challenger Tony Moreno. Gainey was born and raised by a single mother in Pittsburgh, where he lived in public housing and later found a career in politics. “We know how people have talked about Pittsburgh, how siloed it is, how segregated it is,” Gainey told supporters on Tuesday, according to member station WESA. “But today, you changed that.”

Cincinnati elects Aftab Pureval, its first Asian American mayor

The 39-year-old Democrat started his political career six years ago as an outsider, member station WVXU reports, and last night he defeated 82-year-old opponent David Mann, “a longtime pillar of Cincinnati City Hall.”

The son of immigrants from India, Pureval earned his law degree and worked for Procter & Gamble before running successfully for Hamilton County Clerk of Courts in 2016.

Eric Adams becomes the second Black man to lead New York City in its history

New Yorkers chose Democrat Eric Adams, a former police department captain, as the city’s second Black mayor, in a landslide win.

Adams, a former state senator who is currently the Brooklyn borough president, takes over from Bill de Blasio, whose second term was mired in the pandemic and economic turbulence including historic job losses, skyrocketing housing prices and rental rates, and extreme income inequality.

Winsome Sears will be the first Black woman to be Virginia’s lieutenant governor

It’s the highest office a woman of color has won so far in Virginia’s history. Sears, a Republican, won a race that highlighted diversity: her Democratic opponent, Hala Ayala, comes from a family with Salvadoran, Irish, Lebanese and North African heritage.

Abdullah Hammoud becomes the first Arab-American and Muslim mayor of Dearborn, Michigan

The Detroit suburb boasts one of the largest Arab communities in the U.S., but that had never been reflected in the city’s highest office. Hammoud, the son of Lebanese immigrants, dedicated his victory speech Tuesday night to “any young girls or boys who have been ridiculed for their faith or ethnicity.” The Democratic state representative defeated his opponent, longtime Michigan politician Gary Woronchak.

Tyrone Garner will be the first Black mayor of Kansas City, Kansas

In his first political race, Garner unseated one-term incumbent David Alvey in the race to lead Kansas City, Kansas, and Wyandotte County — which have a unified government.

Garner, like Adams in New York, is a former high-ranking police officer. He retired as deputy chief in June 2019, according to member station KCUR. But unlike Adams, his campaign focused not on getting tough on crime but on improving economic equity and public services, particularly for people in neglected neighborhoods. “I am a forward thinker that wants to be a unifying force to facilitate opportunity, equity and hope,” he told KCUR.

The Atlanta Braves become World Series champions

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The Atlanta Braves become World Series champions

The Braves shut out the Houston Astros 7-0 — winning in Minute Maid Park in Houston to take the series, 4-2.

The Astros had gotten the hometown crowd excited days earlier because they had beaten the Braves in Game 5, 9-5. The Braves could have walked away with the title that Sunday night but the Astros rallied.

There was no rally Tuesday night for the Astros. The Braves showed no mercy as they quickly led the game 3-0 by the middle of the third inning when outfielder Jorge Soler had a three-run homer over the train tracks in left field.

It was Soler’s third home run of the series, and he was named the series Most Valuable Player.

Dansby Swanson and Freddie Freeman also homered in Game 6.

In the first inning, Michael Brantley stepped on Braves pitcher Max Fried’s right ankle. It didn’t seem to matter, because after that Fried got 18 outs against the 19 batters he faced. He also became the first pitcher in this series to complete six innings.

The Braves were last champions in 1995 when they beat the Cleveland Indians. The Atlanta franchise now has its fourth World Series title.

Shanghai Disneyland has tested 34,000 people for the coronavirus in a single night

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Shanghai Disneyland has tested 34,000 people for the coronavirus in a single night

Shanghai health authorities say they have tested nearly 34,000 people for the coronavirus in a single night at Shanghai’s Disneyland.

On Sunday evening, the city suddenly closed Shanghai Disneyland and banned anyone inside from leaving. It also shut down the metro station that services the theme park. The park said it did so to cooperate with a contact-tracing investigation after a woman who visited the park Saturday later tested positive for the coronavirus in neighboring Jiangxi province.

Shanghai announced on Monday that all of the guests who had been tested over the weekend came back negative for the coronavirus, according to The Associated Press. Authorities said they will have to be tested again, the outlet reported.

Chinese media say an estimated 100,000 people visited the park Saturday and Sunday, all of whom will now need to be tested.

Shanghai Disneyland and Disneytown remained closed on Monday and Tuesday, and officials promised to provide refunds or exchanges to any attendees impacted by the closure.

“We will notify guests as soon as we have a confirmed date to resume operations,” Shanghai Disney Resort said in a notice on its website. “Thank you for your understanding and cooperation!”

World vow to end deforestation

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World vow to end deforestation

More than 100 countries pledged Tuesday to end deforestation in the coming decade — a promise that experts say would be critical to limiting climate change but one that has been made and broken before.

Britain hailed the commitment as the first big achievement of the U.N. climate conference known as COP26 taking place this month in the Scottish city of Glasgow. But campaigners say they need to see the details to understand its full impact.

The U.K. government said it has received commitments from leaders representing more than 85% of the world’s forests to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. Among them are several countries with massive forests, including Brazil, China, Colombia, Congo, Indonesia, Russia and the United States.

Forests are important ecosystems and provide a critical way of absorbing carbon dioxide — the main greenhouse gas — from the atmosphere. Trees are one of the world’s major so-called carbon sinks, or places where carbon is stored.

But the value of wood as a commodity and the growing demand for agricultural and pastoral land are leading to widespread and often illegal felling of forests, particularly in developing countries.

About 130 world leaders are in Glasgow for what host Britain says is the last realistic chance to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels — the goal the world set in Paris six years ago.

Increased warming over coming decades would melt much of the planet’s ice, raise global sea levels and greatly increase the likelihood and intensity of extreme weather, scientists say.

On Monday, the leaders heard stark warnings from officials and activists alike about those dangers. Britain’s Johnson described global warming as “a doomsday device.” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said that humans are “digging our own graves.” And Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, warned leaders not to “allow the path of greed and selfishness to sow the seeds of our common destruction.”

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II urged the leaders “to rise above the politics of the moment, and achieve true statesmanship.”

“We are doing this not for ourselves but for our children and our children’s children, and those who will follow in their footsteps,” she said in a video message played at a Monday evening reception in the Kelvingrove museum.

The 95-year-old monarch had planned to attend the meeting, but she had to cancel the trip after doctors said she should rest and not travel.

The British government said Monday it saw positive signs that world leaders understood the gravity of the situation. On Tuesday, U.S. President Joe Biden was due to present his administration’s plan to reduce methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes significantly to global warming. The announcement was part of a broader effort with the European Union and other nations to reduce overall methane emissions worldwide by 30% by 2030.

But campaigners say the world’s biggest carbon emitters need to do much more. Earth has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit). Current projections based on planned emissions cuts over the next decade are for it to hit 2.7C (4.9F) by the year 2100.

Cardi B hosts American Music Awards this year

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Cardi B hosts American Music Awards this year

Cardi B, the rapper behind such hits as “Bodak Yellow” and “Money” has been tapped to host the fan-voted awards show airing from Los Angeles on ABC on Nov. 21.

Cardi B performed “I Like It” at the AMAs in 2018 with J Balvin and Bad Bunny and also made history during her last AMAs appearance, becoming the first female rapper to win Favorite Hip-Hop Song twice.

Olivia Rodrigo, in the first year she’s eligible, is the leading nominee this time with seven, including artist of the year and new artist of the year.

Five-time winner The Weeknd has six nominations, going up against Rodrigo in the artist of the year category along with BTS, Ariana Grande, Drake and Taylor Swift.

Reggaeton star Bad Bunny, R&B newcomer Giveon and Doja Cat each have five nominations each. In the new artist of the year category, Rodrigo joins Giveon, 24KGoldn, Masked Wolf and The Kid LAROI.

The AMAs added new categories this year, including favorite trending song, favorite gospel artist and favorite Latin duo or group.

Yahoo pulls out of China, “increasingly challenging legal environment”

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Yahoo pulls out of China, “increasingly challenging legal environment”

According to AP, Yahoo Inc. said Tuesday it has pulled out of China, citing an increasingly challenging operating environment.

The withdrawal was largely symbolic, as many of the company’s services were already blocked by China’s digital censorship. But recent government moves to expand its control over tech companies generally, including its domestic giants, may have tipped the scales for Yahoo.

Yahoo is the latest foreign tech company to exit China. Google gave up several years ago, and Microsoft’s professional networking platform LinkedIn said last month it would shutter its Chinese site, replacing it with a jobs board instead. The departures illustrate the choices internet companies face in a huge potential market, but one where the government requires them to censor content and keywords deemed politically sensitive or inappropriate.

In their place, Chinese companies have filled the void, creating an alternative internet with its own digital giants. The Baidu search engine has largely replaced Yahoo and Google in China, and WeChat and Weibo are the leading social media platforms.

Yahoo’s departure coincided with the implementation of China’s Personal Information Protection Law, which limits what information companies can gather and sets standards for how it must be stored.

Chinese laws also stipulate that companies operating in the country must hand over data if requested by authorities, making it difficult for Western firms to operate in China as they may also face pressure back home over giving in to China’s demands.

Yahoo was harshly criticized by lawmakers in the U.S. in 2007 after it handed over data on two Chinese dissidents to Beijing, eventually leading to their imprisonment.

Yahoo had previously downsized its operations in China, dropping a music and email service in the early 2010s and shuttering its Beijing office in 2015. Anyone who tried to access Engadget China, a tech news site that it had continued to operate, was greeted Tuesday with a popup saying the site would no longer publish content.

People of color at higher rates than a decade ago

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People of color at higher rates than a decade ago

Last year’s approximately $14.2 billion census likely undercounted people of color at higher rates than those of the previous once-a-decade tally, an Urban Institute study released Tuesday suggests.

Researchers at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank say that while the Census Bureau may have continued to overcount people who identified as white and not Latino, it also likely failed to count some 2.5 million people in other racial and ethnic groups.

The Urban Institute estimates that nationwide, the net undercount rates by race or ethnicity were highest for Black people (2.45%), Latinx people (2.17%) and Pacific Islanders (1.52%). The estimated net undercount rates for Asian Americans and Native Americans were each less than a percent.

The Urban Institute’s method for calculating the national head count’s accuracy is different from what the Census Bureau uses. The think tank’s new figures come months before the bureau is set to start releasing its over- and undercount estimates from a follow-up survey for a census that was disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic and interference from former President Donald Trump’s administration, including a failed push to add a citizenship question.

“In a decennial census where there was a lot of uncertainty, I think it’s increasingly important to have external benchmarks on census data so we know, for example, if states need to rethink how they allocate resources within their state,” Diana Elliott, one of the Urban Institute report’s co-authors, says of how each state’s share of federal funding is determined in part by census results.

To produce their estimates, researchers with the Urban Institute used census participation rates, national survey results and other data to simulate results of last year’s national head count.

New: COVID vaccine rules for international travelers

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New: COVID vaccine rules for international travelers

The U.S. has come up with new rules and regulations for travelers flying in from other countries, to take effect on Monday, November 8.

Here’s a rundown of the new protocols for those coming from abroad for a job, to study, to visit family – or to find a new home for humanitarian reasons. We’ll also look at obstacles that loom.

Which vaccines are on the OK list

If you’ve been vaccinated, you’ll have to show a digital or paper version of the card along with ID that matches all of your personal information on the vaccine card. But not all versions of the vaccine qualify. Under the new rules, accepted vaccines for travel to the U.S. are limited to those currently on the World Health Organization or U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized or approved lists. That includes Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Janssen (Johnson & Johnson), AstraZeneca-Oxford and the two Chinese vaccines, Sinopharm and Sinovac.

But it leaves out, for example, the widely used Russian vaccine Sputnik V. India, Mexico, Turkey, Honduras, Iran and the Palestinian territories are among the places that have used the Sputnik vaccine to vaccinate millions. The CDC hasn’t said why Sputnik didn’t make the cut but WHO raised concerns about the vaccine’s manufacturing plant this summer. What’s more, an Associated Press report noted that some countries that received the first of Sputnik’s two doses had trouble getting all the second doses needed.

Exceptions for the unvaccinated

Much of the world is not vaccinated. According to current information from Our World in Data, 49.4% of the world’s population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, but only 3.6% of people in low-income countries have.

For those who aren’t vaccinated (or didn’t get a vaccine from the approved list), a trip to the U.S. is still possible – but only if they meet one of the conditions for an exception as detailed on lists from the U.S. State Department.

Perhaps the most sweeping exception is for travelers with passports from any country where fewer than 10% of the country’s population has been vaccinated. That list will be regularly updated, according to the State Department. Currently, there are 50 countries on the list, 34 of them in Africa.

And once you arrive, there are more rules to follow

The new Biden administration rules also address protocols after arrival in the U.S., including more testing, isolating if you do contract COVID-19 and a strong nudge to get the vaccination for people who will be in the country 60 days or longer. Here’s a link to everything U.S. citizens and foreigners need to know about what’s expected of them in the days after travel to the U.S. from another country.

The CDC does not say how it will enforce these post-arrival rules although the Departments of Transportation and Homeland Security can deny airplane boarding to anyone not in compliance.

As the countdown to the November 8 start date begins, some medical authorities are concerned that the swift timing will add to the confusion felt by potential visitors from overseas.

A man dressed in a Joker costume injures 17 people on Tokyo train

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A man dressed in a Joker costume injures 17 people on Tokyo train

A man dressed in a Joker costume and brandishing a knife stabbed at least one passenger on a Tokyo commuter train before starting a fire, injuring passengers and sending people scrambling to escape and jumping from windows, police and witnesses said.

The Tokyo Fire Department said 17 passengers were injured, including three seriously. Not all of them were stabbed and most of the other injuries were not serious, the fire department said.

The attacker, whom police identified as 24-year-old Kyota Hattori, was arrested on the spot after Sunday’s attack and was being investigated on suspicion of attempted murder, the Tokyo metropolitan police department said Monday.

The attacker, riding an express train headed to Tokyo’s Shinjuku station, abruptly took out a knife and stabbed a seated passenger — a man in his 70s — in the right chest, police said. Injury details of other 16 passengers are still being investigated, police said.

Police said he told authorities that he wanted to kill people and get the death penalty. Nippon Television said he also said that he used an earlier train stabbing case as an example.

Witnesses told police that the attacker was wearing a bright outfit — a green shirt, a blue suit and a purple coat — like the Joker villain in Batman comics or someone going to a Halloween event, according to media reports.

A video posted by a witness on social media showed the suspect seated, with his leg crossed and smoking in one of the train cars, presumably after the attack.

While shooting deaths are rare in Japan, the country has had a series of high-profile knife killings in recent years.

In 2019, a man carrying two knives attacked a group of schoolgirls waiting at a bus stop just outside Tokyo, killing two people and injuring 17 before killing himself. In 2018, a man killed a passenger and injuring two others in a knife attack on a bullet train. In 2016, a former employee at a home for the disabled killed 19 people and injured more than 20.

COVID-19 now killed 5 million people around the world

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COVID-19 now killed 5 million people around the world

Global deaths from COVID-19 have now surpassed 5 million, according to the data released Monday from Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus tracker.

The U.S. leads the world in the number of confirmed deaths from the virus with more than 745,800 people dead from COVID-19. Brazil (with more than 607,000 deaths) and India (with more than 450,000 deaths) follow the U.S. in the number of lives lost since the start of the pandemic.

The World Health Organization recently reported a rise in cases in Europe during October.

As of Oct. 26, the European region experienced an 18% surge in new COVID-19 cases. Southeast Asia, a region experiencing a similar rise in new COVID cases, also reported a 13% increase in new COVID-19 deaths.

Globally, as of Oct. 26, the health organization reported more than 2.9 million cases and more than 49, 000 new deaths, a 4% and 5% increase respectively.

Last month, Russian officials registered the highest death toll in Europe: more than 235,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic. Due to skyrocketing infections from the delta strain, officials there launched a temporary lockdown in an attempt to defeat the virus.

On Friday, Reuters reported that Poland’s total number of COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic passed 3 million. Daily cases are quickly gaining pace as the country is in the middle of the fourth wave of the virus.

In Singapore, where officials have decided to coexist with the coronavirus and cease lockdown measures, a jump in cases has been reported there, too.

More than 80% of Singapore’s population has been immunized against COVID-19. Yet as of Oct. 30, cases jumped to well over 3,000 cases a day in about two months.

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