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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
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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.
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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