Chicago Public Schools reverse stance, will teach remotely in the fall

The school system decided to keep kids home instead of risking a coronavirus spike

This week, Chicago Public Schools, the nation’s third-largest school system, has announced that the coming school year will be conducted entirely via remote learning for all students.

Read More: Nurse brawls with Chicago subway passenger who blames health care workers for coronavirus

According to a local NBC affiliate, Wednesday morning CPS CEO Janice Jackson and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot made the announcement at a news conference, stating the district had made the decision in efforts to mitigate risk to both students and faculty in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

“The decision to begin the 2020-2021 CPS school year remotely during the first quarter is rooted in public health data and the invaluable feedback we’ve received from parents and families,” Lightfoot explained in a statement announcing the decision.

This came just hours after reports surfaced the night before that the district realized it would need to move away from its previously announced hybrid model.

Chicago’s mayor announced that the nation’s third-largest school district will not welcome students back to the classroom, after all, and will instead rely only on remote instruction to start the school year https://t.co/e2DY5qIlzK

— TIME (@TIME) August 5, 2020

READ MORE: Pence ‘wouldn’t hesitate’ to send his kids back to school amid COVID-19

“As a district, we value parent feedback and we cannot overlook that a large percentage of parents have indicated they do not feel comfortable sending their students to school under a hybrid model for the start of the school year,” Jackson conceded in a message of her own.

“I understand the uncertainty this pandemic has caused our parents, especially communities of color who have been disproportionately impacted. We are making every possible effort to provide a high-quality remote learning experience in the fall, utilizing live, virtual instruction for every student, every day, and we are committed to ongoing engagement and communication with parents.”

A source close to the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) reported to CNN that the Chicago Teachers Union had planned to convene their House of Delegates early next week to discuss taking a strike vote to demand remote learning for Chicago Public Schools.

Read More: Newly promoted Chicago police chief dies by suicide in department facility

This latest development has most likely stopped plans of a possible strike from the CTU.

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Airline promises travelers a free funeral if infected with COVID-19

Emirates says that they will handle funeral expenses if any passenger is infected on their flights

As COVID-19 continues to affect the travel industry airlines are looking for creative incentives to get passengers to fill their seats. But one airline is raising eyebrows after it decided to start offering to cover medical expenses – and even funeral costs – for any travelers infected during their flights.

READ MORE: Michelle Obama reveals ‘low-grade’ depression on podcast episode

According to Forbes, Emirates Airlines’ new policies stipulate that if one of its passengers is diagnosed with COVID-19 during a trip taken with them, the Dubai-based carrier will cover their medical expenses, up to €150,000 – which comes out to approximately about $176,000 USD.

An Airbus A380-861 operated by Emirates takes off from JFK Airport on August 24, 2019 in the Queens borough of New York City. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images) (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

They will also cover $118 per day for quarantine costs such as a hotel room, for up to two weeks. And in worst-case scenarios, Emirates will also offer approximately $1,765 to a passenger’s loved ones to go towards funeral costs. 

This unconventional insurance policy is automatically activated with ticketing, effective immediately, and carries no additional fees for passengers.

😳✈️😵⚰️
In A Twist On Loyalty Programs, Emirates Is Promising Travelers A Free Funeral If Infected With Covid https://t.co/nTEXCJWEPk

— Don Cheadle (@DonCheadle) August 5, 2020

Forbes writer Avi Dan opines, “The premise of insurance for medical bills or quarantine is brave. It’s bold and cuts to the heart of the reluctance to travel. It doesn’t skirt the emotions surrounding COVID-19 but tackles them head-on. However, the fact that the insurance includes death coverage could be problematic. It could encourage the kind of mental imagery that an airline normally wouldn’t want associated with its brand.”

Dan also notes that the key to the success of this unprecedented approach is in its execution, warning that if the policy is mishandled it could do irreversible harm to the company’s reputation.

READ MORE: Twitter suspends Donald Trump Jr.’s account for spreading COVID-19 misinformation

But given that on average airlines are only flying planes at 20-30% capacity and many times have to cancel flights to some airports entirely, this seems to be a risk that Emirates is willing to take if it’ll have a positive impact on their bottom line.

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Banned protesters send #ZimbabweanLivesMatter viral

The social media campaign tapping into the anger of the global #BlackLivesMatter phenomenon.

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NBA player Lou Williams regrets strip club meal

The Clippers guard says that he probably could have made a better decision

Clippers guard Lou Williams became the first casualty of the NBA “bubble” when he went to Atlanta’s Magic City to have what he says is his usual meal after traveling there for the funeral of a longtime mentor.

Read More: WNBA players sport ‘Vote Warnock’ tees in opposition of Atlanta Dream co-owner

But he also says that the backlash to the incident was overblown. He was still processing the death of someone he considered family and because of it maybe didn’t think his decision through as much as he should have.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 28: Lou Williams #23 of the LA Clippers smiles during a timeout in the game against the Denver Nuggets at Staples Center on February 28, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)

As reported by ESPN, Williams, 33, acknowledged in his first post-game press conference after he was isolated per quarantine protocol that he didn’t make the best choice.

“In hindsight, I think as far as the public safety issue goes, I probably could have made a better-quality decision,” Williams, the league’s reigning Sixth Man, said. “I was a little naïve in that aspect. I went somewhere after a viewing of somebody I considered a mentor, somebody I looked up to, first Black man I seen with legal money in my life.”

Williams, who grew up in Georgia, had an excused absence from the team to attend the funeral of Paul G. Williams, a friend’s father. He defended going to the club, which was close to the viewing, as a place he frequents all the time when he’s in town.

But I digress. I went home to see a man off to his final resting place that was a giant in my life. I don’t want that to get lost in all this attention. So again, LONG LIVE THE GREAT PAUL WILLIAMS SR. back to my quarantine so I can join the guys soon. Peace

— Lou Williams (@TeamLou23) July 27, 2020

“It’s been documented how much I talk about this place, how much I eat there,” Williams said. “I just did something that was routine for me. I frequent that place at that time of day, 5:30, 6 in the afternoon.”

He explained his thought process.

“At the time, I thought I was making a responsible decision. After looking back on it, with everything going on in the world, the pandemic, maybe it wasn’t the best-quality decision. I chalk it up as that, take my L and keep moving,” he said.

The legendary strip club that has been featured in multiple music videos is a popular one for Atlanta-based celebrities. Williams is such a frequent customer that the club’s lemon pepper BBQ wings are named for him.

He says the trip was a quick “in and out” but that description was refuted by a Magic City dancer who told the Los Angeles Times she was one of the club’s dancers who performed for him.

“He tipped very well,” a dancer named Aries told the Times.

The club reopened in June after a mandated closing due to the COVID-19.

Williams had to quarantine for 10 days upon his return to the NBA “bubble” at Disney’s Wide World of Sports complex in Orlando, Florida where the NBA season restarted last month.

He missed the first two games of the Clippers season and is one of several Clippers players who had excused absences for personal issues, including Patrick Beverly and Montrezl Harrell, who lost his grandmother.

Lou Williams #23 of the LA Clippers during warm up before a preseason game against the Denver Nuggets at Staples Center on October 10, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)

Though the NBA bubble has gone off mostly without a hitch, Williams says that it doesn’t mean that real-life issues don’t puncture it in certain situations.

“I truly was grieving two weeks ago. I was really going through something. I was thrown under the bus, you know what I’m saying?” Williams said to the media.

“All the attention turned to Magic City because it’s a gentlemen’s club. I feel like if I was at a steakhouse or Hooters or whatever, it wouldn’t be half the story.”

He pleaded for understanding.

Read More: Odell Beckham Jr. says it doesn’t make sense to have an NFL season

“I pray and I really hope these fans understand what Trez (Montrezl Harrell) is going through while he’s away, so when he come back, people don’t have a lot to say. Pat went through the thing with his family. I went through my thing. We’re having real-life issues in the world,” he said.

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Instagram Launches Reels, Its TikTok Clone, in the US

The company is wooing creators with features they know and love, on a platform President Trump doesn’t publicly hate.

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Former Facebook Manager Attacks Black America: Obama was President So Stop The Victim Mentality, Says No To Reparations

A former Facebook manager posted a video on his YouTube channel blasting Black America, the George Floyd protesters and the call for reparations.

His name is Patrick Shyu, and according to his LinkedIn page, he was the tech lead for Facebook from 2018 to 2019. He was also tech lead at Google from 2014 to 2018 and prior to that, launched an apps and games company called Avalancia.com. Shyu claims he was fired from Facebook according to his channel, TechLead Show, which claims to have 30,000 followers.

“This isn’t about equality…people want privilege and you just start playing the victim and blaming other people,” he rants.

“You take on the victim mentality and start saying the world owes me something,” he continues before insisting that there have been other races in the U.S. who have suffered just as much, or if not more, than Black people.

“Black people have it pretty good,” he insists. “We had a Black president, in the NBA it’s all Black people, have these blockbuster movies like ‘Black Panther’ with an all-Black cast…”

He goes on to ask, where are the Asians, Native Americans, the Italians and why aren’t they dominating such fields as music, sports, film, like Black people?

When it comes to reparations, he remarks that “the Japanese were war prisoners” so they had it worse than Black people who were slaves.

He adds of slavery, “That was the past, let it be…now we want our children to pay for that.”

Mojola Balogun (@moebee2) posted Shyu’s video on Twitter and said, “This is a former Google and Facebook software engineering manager. These are his views on BLM and racism in the US. At top tech companies, Black people consistently make up less than 3 percent of engineers. Why is diversity and Black retention so low? Because these are our managers.”

Of course, Balogun’s tweet caught a lot of people’s attention.

JamesHRH (@jameshrh) responded, “This PoV is simplistic & quite common among highly analytical, engineering types. Bounded inputs. But your argument about cause is, frankly, just wrong. SV is 3 percent Black bc Black students are 4 percent of engineering graduates: https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf19304/digest/field-of-degree-minorities That’s where you start the fix.”

Kristine (Sato) Phillips (@ksato_phillips) tweeted, “#Facebook is comprised of managers just like him. They also come in white female form as well. I wrked there in HR for 3 yrs & was racially discriminated & harassed to the point where I had to file a workers comp claim & now have chronic #PTSD. FB only has 1.5 percent in tech roles”

This article was originally written by Ann Brown for The Moguldom Nation.

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Kentucky Restaurant Owner Says Black Lives Matter is Using Mafia Tactics

A Louisville, Kentucky, restaurant owner is accusing local Black Lives Matter activists of threats and mafia tactics after demanding downtown business owners hire Black employees.

According to The Hill, several business owners in the city’s NuLu district received a list of demands which included hiring Black workers to fill a minimum of 23% of positions. The list also demands a minimum of 23% of purchases of inventory to be made from Black retailers and mandatory diversity and inclusion training twice a year.

Fernando Martinez, owner of La Bodeguita de Mima, said after a protest on July 24 protesters told him he “better put [the list of demands] on the door so your business is not f—ed with.”

“There comes a time in life that you have to make a stand and you have to really prove your convictions and what you believe in,” Martinez wrote in a Facebook post. “… All good people need to denounce this. How can you justified (sic) injustice with more injustice?”

Members of the Cuban community and friends of the restaurant rallied in support of the restaurant Sunday afternoon.

Activist Phelix Crittenden, who works with the local Black Lives Matter chapter, said the list wasn’t meant to be a threat but intended to draw attention to the displacement of Black residents after a housing project was demolished in the early 2000s.

Like many areas that have gone through gentrification — such as Oakland, Brooklyn, and Atlanta, — the project was replaced with mixed-income housing, with only 41 of the 635 displaced families returning.

“NuLu is flourishing,” Crittenden told The Hill. “To see that literal line in the sand, as soon as you cross the street, it’s very disturbing. NuLu doesn’t reflect the community they sit in and claim to incorporate and serve.”

The Black Lives Matter movement has seen a resurgence of protests and demands of action after the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.

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A New Hotline Offers Free Anonymous Support for Gamers

The Games and Online Harassment Hotline launched Tuesday as a resource for anyone to talk about the emotional issues that emerge all over the industry.

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An '80s File Format Enabled Stealthy Mac Hacking

The now-patched vulnerability would have let hackers target Microsoft Office using Symbolic Link—a file type that hasn't been in common use in over 30 years.

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Cameroon attack: ‘It will mark my spirit for the rest of my life’

The killing of 22 people, including many children, inspired artist Kobe Williams to use sand for art.

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Your Income Predicts How Well You Can Socially Distance

America's rich used to move around more than the poor. When Covid landed, that flipped: The wealthy now work remotely, while essential workers toil.

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Can Killing Cookies Save Journalism?

A Dutch public broadcaster got rid of targeted digital ads—and its revenues went way up.

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Inside the Courthouse Break-In Spree That Landed Two White Hat Hackers in Jail

When two men were hired to break into Iowa judicial buildings, they thought it was just another physical security audit—until they were charged with burglary.

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How to Automatically Build and Configure Custom Docker Images with Dockerfile – Part 3

This tutorial will concentrate on how to build a custom Docker image based on Ubuntu with Apache service installed. The whole process will be automated using a Dockerfile. Docker images can be automatically built

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How to Install, Run and Delete Applications Inside Docker Containers – Part 2

Following the previous Docker article, this tutorial will discuss how to save a Docker container into a new image, remove a container, and run an Nginx web server inside a container. Requirements How to

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Coronavirus: Bringing Covid-19 news to Senegal's deaf community

Student Naomie Koffie's summaries of the news in sign language have won praise from the president.

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Install Docker and Learn Basic Container Manipulation in CentOS and RHEL 8/7 – Part 1

In this 4-article series, we will discuss Docker, which is an open-source lightweight virtualization tool that runs at top of Operating System level, allowing users to create, run and deploy applications, encapsulated into small

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Marcel – A More Modern Shell for Linux

Marcel is a new shell. It is similar to traditional shells in many ways, but it does a few things differently: Piping: All shells use pipes to send a text from the output of

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How to Install Security Updates in Ubuntu

One of the easiest ways to protect your Ubuntu systems is by keeping up to date software on them. Therefore applying updates frequently is an important part of maintaining secure systems. In this article,

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Ta-Nehisi Coates to guest edit Vanity Fair September issue

The best-selling author is working with the editorial and creative teams on a special issue that will explore art and activism in America.

Renowned journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates has been tapped to guest edit the September issue of Vanity Fair.

“There’s no one better suited than Ta-Nehisi to illuminate this urgent moment in American history—to answer the question, why is this time different?” said the publication’s editor in chief Radhika Jones. “We are honored to collaborate with him on this project, bringing together the writers, artists, and icons whose work pushes us toward a more just world.”

Coates, a best-selling author, is working with the editorial and creative teams to oversee every process of the production for a special issue that will explore art and activism in America, per Vanity Fair. 

Read More: HBO to adapt Ta-Nehisi Coates’ ‘Between the World and Me’

“I’m honored to be partnering with Radhika and the entire Vanity Fair staff on this project,” said Coates. “Equally, I’m humbled that so many of this country’s best writers and artists have agreed to participate. The moment is too big for any one of us to address alone.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates will guest-edit V.F.’s September issue—a special edition exploring art, activism, and power in 21st-century America. The issue will also feature more than 40 prominent creators, including Ava DuVernay, Bomani Jones, Jesmyn Ward, and more. https://t.co/w3EZMifCY9

— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) August 4, 2020

The issue features more than 40 influencers and artists, including Ava DuVernay, Zerina Akers, Jason Bolden, Quil Lemons and more.

In related news, a stage production of Coates’ “Between the World and Me,” his prize winning book about racism and police violence, is being adapted by HBO for a special this fall.

An earlier report on theGRIO noted that the program will feature readings from “Between the World and Me” and will be directed by Apollo Theater Executive Producer Kamilah Forbes.

“I’ve been working with Kamilah for almost as long as I’ve been a writer,” Coates said in a statement. “I can think of no one better to put ‘Between the World and Me’ on screen and no better home for it than HBO.”

Coates’ book, published in 2015, is structured as an open letter to his adolescent son about what to expect as a Black person living in the United States.

The September issue of Vanity Fair hits newsstands September 1.

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