Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 3, 2017)
Page 8A NATION East Oregonian Tuesday, October 3, 2017 Supreme Court begins with workers’ rights Poll: Americans want local leaders to fight global warming By MARK SHERMAN Associated Press WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court opened a high-profile term Monday with a case about employees’ rights that could affect an estimated 25 million workers. Justice Neil Gorsuch, in his first full term on the bench, was silent during an otherwise lively argument in which the justices seemed closely divided. The case is of considerable impor- tance to employers and their workers because it involves how employees can complain about pay and conditions in the workplace. The issue is whether businesses can force employees to individually use arbitration to resolve disputes. The case pits labor laws intended to allow workers to band together against an older law encouraging the use of arbi- tration, instead of the courts. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, seeming to speak for the court’s liberal wing, said the importance of collective action is “there is strength in numbers. You have to protect the individual worker in a situation where he can’t protect himself.” The conservative justices appeared to have a different view of the case. Chief Justice John Roberts sounded concerned about a ruling for the workers, which he said “would invalidate contracts for 25 million employees.” That’s the estimated number of non-union workers who have contracts with the individual arbitration provision that is at the heart of the case. One of the term’s biggest cases, about partisan advantage in drawing electoral districts, is set for argument Tuesday. It has the potential to reshape AP Photo/Susan Walsh People stand in line to go into the Supreme Court in Washington, Monday for the first day of the new term. The Supreme Court term that, by law, begins on the first Monday in October includes several high- profile cases dealing with controversial social issues or with the potential to affect millions of Americans. American politics, if the court for the first time rules that political maps can be excessively partisan. The justices took their seats just after 10 o’clock on the first Monday in October, the day prescribed in federal law as the start of the high court term. Roberts quickly declared the last term over and the new one, begun. Then he welcomed the nation’s new solicitor general, Noel Francisco, who was confirmed by the Senate last month as the Trump administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer. Francisco’s appearance was one of several signs of changes at or involving the court since Donald Trump’s elec- tion as president. Trump appointed Gorsuch to fill the seat that had been vacant since Justice Antonin Scalia’s death. President Barack Obama had nominated Judge Merrick Garland for the vacancy, but Senate Republicans refused to act on Garland’s nomination. Another marker of change was in the administration’s position in the employer-employee dispute. The Obama administration had sided with the workers, but Trump’s Justice Department reversed that position. The result was the rare appearance of two lawyers for governmental agencies on opposite sides of the same case. While the Justice Department contended the businesses should win, the National Labor Relations Board argued that the workers should be protected. BRIEFLY Many Puerto Ricans angry over Trump’s comments SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Outside of official events, many Puerto Ricans say they won’t be welcoming President Donald Trump with open arms during his visit to the storm-wracked island on Tuesday. People in the U.S. territory were angry or dismissive Monday when asked about Trump’s description of some Puerto Ricans who have criticized the U.S. government’s aid after Hurricane Maria as “ingrates” and about his assurances that the relief effort is going well. “He’s a piece of trash,” Rachel Cruz, a linguist, said as she head home after buying groceries in the capital, San Juan. “He makes a fool out of himself and a fool out of his country.” Cruz said Puerto Ricans are furious with power still cut off on most of the island, schools and many businesses closed, and much of the countryside struggling to find fresh water and food, but she said even the angriest were unlikely to openly insult the man ultimately responsible for helping them. “The majority of people here feel that way, but we have to be more balanced because we need help,” she said. Even those happy with the federal aid effort for the U.S. territory’s 3.4 million people said they resented Trump’s tweets about some Puerto Ricans being lazy and ungrateful. Biological clock discoveries earn Nobel Prize Idaho school settles in locker room assault case NEW YORK (AP) — Three Americans won a Nobel Prize on Monday for discovering key genetic “gears” of the body’s 24-hour biological clock, the mechanism best known for causing jet lag when it falls out of sync. Problems with our body clock have also been linked to such disorders as sleep problems, depression, heart disease, diabetes and obesity. Researchers are now trying to find ways to tinker with the clock to improve human health, the Nobel committee said in Stockholm. It awarded the $1.1 million Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Jeffrey C. Hall and Michael Rosbash, who worked together at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, and Michael W. Young of Rockefeller University in New York. They “were able to peek inside our biological clock” and discover details of its inner workings, the Nobel citation said. The work, done in fruit flies and dating back to 1984, identified genes and proteins that work together in people and other animals to synchronize internal activities throughout the day and night. Various clocks in the brain and elsewhere in the body, working together, regulate things like sleep patterns, eating habits and the release of hormones and blood pressure. Such 24-hour patterns are called circadian rhythms. BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A southern Idaho school district has agreed to settle a federal lawsuit involving a black football player who said he was sexually assaulted by three teammates in a high school locker room in 2015. Lee Schlender, the victim’s attorney, confirmed Monday a monetary settlement was reached with the Dietrich School District, but declined to share details regarding the amount and terms of the agreement. The settlement is currently sealed in federal court. The school district’s attorney did not immediately return a request for comment. Last year, the victim’s family filed a $10 million lawsuit detailing months of racial harassment against the victim by fellow students. The lawsuit accused the school of failing to prevent the abuse despite many incidents happening in front of football coaches and other school officials. Furthermore, it claimed that the victim faced racial slurs, was forced to recite a racist song and was subjected to a fistfight during football camp. Google spikes free-article requirements on publishers NEW YORK (AP) — Google is ending a decade-old policy that required publishers to I NTRODUCING P HONAK D IRECT C ONNECTIVITY H EARING A IDS • Direct connectivity to any cell phone * • Hearing aids used as a wireless head- set for hands-free calls • Excellent TV sound quality1 with hearing aids turned into wireless TV headphones Phonak direct connectivity hearing aids offer universal connectivity to any cell phone* regardless of the brand or operating system. With direct connectivity hearing aids, Phonak offers a solution that provides true hands-free functionality just like a Bluetooth® wireless headset. The hearing aids utilize it’s built-in microphones to pick up the clients voice for phone calls. A call can be heard ringing directly in the hearing aids and with a simple push of a button, can be answered or rejected. This can be done at distance from the telephone e.g. while a client is positioned on the other side of a room. Direct connectivity also extends to media playing with automatic connectivity to any TV or stereo system through a new and compact, multimedia hub called TV Connector. It delivers excellent stereo sound quality up to 15m away and does not require any additional streaming device. With Phonak direct connectivity hearing aids, clients can enjoy the freedom of universal connectivity RENATA ANDERSON M.A. 2237 Southwest • Court Place Pendleton, OR 97801 541-276-5053 provide some free stories to Google users —though it’s not clear how many readers will even notice, at least for the moment. Publishers had been required to provide at least three free stories a day under the search engine’s previous policy, called “first click free.” Now they have the power to choose how many free articles they want to offer readers via Google before charging a fee, Richard Gingras, vice president of news at Google Inc., wrote Monday in a company blog post . The goal is to help publishers build up digital subscriptions, an imperative for many media outlets that pay large sums for news production but are starved for advertising revenue. Google’s previous approach had let readers skirt paywall policies by typing a headline into Google and getting access to a story without having it count against a monthly free article limit, said Kinsey. WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans want their local officials to take on the challenge of battling global warming now that President Donald Trump is withdrawing the nation an international climate change agreement. That’s according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. The poll finds 57 percent of Americans say they favor local governments picking up the slack to try and reduce greenhouse gas emissions on their own, with only 10 percent opposing it. About 55 percent of Americans say their own local and state governments should be doing more to address global warming, with only 10 percent saying they should be doing less. And more Americans oppose than favor Trump’s effort to pull the U.S. out of the 2015 Paris accord, in which nearly 200 nations agreed to self-imposed cuts or limits on emissions of heat-trapping gas pollution. Forty-two percent of those surveyed said they oppose getting out of the Paris agreement, while 28 percent favored the withdrawal and 28 percent had no strong opinion. Among Democrats 64 percent want to stay in the Paris agree- ment and 17 percent don’t. More Republicans favored withdrawing, 46 percent, than staying in, 22 percent. Martha Oberman, an online businesswoman from Texas who sells collectibles, called Trump’s decision to get out of the Paris agreement “horrible, short-sighted.” “If we’re not going to get (action) from the top, you have to start at the bottom at the local level and work its way to the top,” Oberman said. Local governments can get things done, said Antonio Torres, a former chef in central Florida. He’d like to see local governments bring more solar energy use online. That rings true with Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski, who co-chairs two committees of mayors who are fighting climate change. One of her groups has 115 cities committed to the goal of having their cities operating entirely on renew- able energy by the year 2035. Salt Lake City is hoping to beat that goal by a few years. “We’re leading the conversation because we have to now,” Biskupski said. “Here we are with the president coming out against supporting the Paris agree- ment. Now we really ramped things up with the mayors across the country.” Overall, 72 percent of Americans say they believe climate change is happening and 63 percent think human activity is at least partially responsible. Eighty-two percent of Democrats and 43 percent of Republicans say they believe in at least partially human-caused climate change. The poll was conducted before a spate of hurricanes battered Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico. Eighty percent of Democrats and 43 percent of Republicans think it’s a problem the U.S. government should be addressing. Torres said in Florida he feels the heat of climate change and recently his house was banged up by Hurricane Irma. “We definitely have climate change,” Oberman said from Texas. “We’ve seen Houston. We’ve seen Puerto Rico. To say there is no climate change is crazy.” But not Ruth Acquaviva of Delaware, who retired from working in accounting. “What are you going to do about it? It’s a natural phenomenon,” she said. “It’s Mother Nature changing some things. It’s not a big deal.” Around 90 percent of all scientific studies and nearly every major scientific organization in the world say climate change is real, at least partly caused by humans and a problem. But to that Acquaviva said those researchers “are absolutely bullcrap. There’s no way in God’s world they can prove to me it’s man-made.” Acquaviva said there’s no need “to spend money on climate change.” However, most Ameri- cans said they’d be willing to spend a little extra on their electricity bill to fight climate change, with the key words being “a little.” 51 percent would be willing to pay an additional $1 on each month’s electricity bill. though just 4 in 10 would be willing to pay an additional $10 a month. About 3 in 10 would even be willing to pay an additional $20 to $40 a month. Now Connecting Businesses With Customers In More Ways Than Ever! www.statewideyp.com Simpl e y Best th g! Advertisin CALL TO PLACE YOUR AD TODAY! 5009 W Clearwater Ave Ste J, Kennewick, WA 99336 • Fax: 509-734-5362 • Email: support@statewideyp.com The family of Kenny Nichols would like to take a moment to extend a heartfelt THANK YOU to everyone who joined us to celebrate the life of our Kenny. Your Love, Laughter, Tears and Stories will continue to hold us up as we work to find our new normal. To those Family and Friends who went above and beyond to make our tearful goodbye bearable - we can’t thank you enough. There are no words to express our Gratitude. We would like to leave all of you with Kenny’s wish in life.... Love Each Other, Live a Good Life Filled with Laughter, Pranks, Hugs and Good Deeds. Find that Stranger and make them a friend....SEE THE GOOD IN ALL!! Garrett, Kylie and Madison Nichols Shannon Nichols Austin, Justin and Laiklyn Fields Alan and Bonnie Cleaver Russ and Sue Nichols Jason and Tandy Cleaver & Family Addie and Richard Cole & Family Katie and Kyle Fetterhoff & Family
