We didn’t get a Friday night news dump before the end of the year, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a whole lot of good news to go around!
California officially becomes “sanctuary state”:
California became a "sanctuary state" Monday, as a bill that Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law in October officially took effect.
The law bars police in the nation's most populous state from asking people about their immigration status or participating in federal immigration enforcement activities in most cases, Fox News reported.
The Golden State is home to an estimated 2.3 million illegal immigrants.
California lifts recreational marijuana ban:
Sales of recreational marijuana began on Monday, January 1, after Californians voted to legalize the drug in the 2016 election. The market's debut brings an end to prohibition in the most populous state, which is now also the biggest legal marijuana market in America.
Adults over the age of 21 can now use, carry, and buy up to an ounce of marijuana for non-medical use, and grow as many as six plants at home, without a doctor's letter.
Minimum wage rises for many:
A new minimum wage has gone into effect in Seattle, paying new hires $15.45 per hour, and in the Seattle suburb of Seatac, a $15.65 floor, the highest in the land.
Among other locales where the wage will be raised Jan. 1 are San Francisco, starting out at $15. New York City workers receive a floor minimum wage of $13 as of Sunday, Dec. 31. Washington, D.C., already has more generous hourly pay now than many other places and is on track to hit $15 an hour in 2020.
In addition, 18 states will give unskilled workers more money starting on Jan. 1., in wages that range from $8.85 to $11.50 an hour.
Last year in January we saw the Women’s March. This year women are becoming even more powerful!
Hollywood women step up:
Three hundred female Hollywood actors, directors, writers, producers, agents and executives - including Reese Witherspoon, Shonda Rhimes and Emma Stone - have launched an initiative to help fight sexual harassment in the workplace.
The new project, called Time’s Up, includes a $13m (£9.6m) legal defence fund to help women in less privileged professions push back against sexual misconduct in the workplace and any consequences that may follow reporting it.
And take over Miss America pageant:
Former Fox News host and Miss America 1989 Gretchen Carlson will take over as the chairwoman of the Miss America pageant's board of directors.
Carlson was named to the position alongside three other former Miss America winners joining the board including Laura Kaeppeler Fleiss who won in 2012, Heather French Henry who won in 2000 and Kate Shindle who won in 1998, The New York Times reported.
The new board members will lead Miss America after three executives including executive chairman and CEO Sam Haskell, president and COO Josh Randle and chairman Lynn Weidner resigned recently amid a leaked email scandal.
Chief Justice Roberts to review workplace harassment policies in judiciary:
Writing in his annual report on the judiciary, issued Sunday, Roberts touched only briefly on the issue of workplace sexual misconduct, which has in recent months brought down men in entertainment, politics and the media. In December, prominent federal appeals court Judge Alex Kozinski retired following accusations by women that he had touched them inappropriately, made lewd comments and shown them pornography.
“Events in recent months have illuminated the depth of the problem of sexual harassment in the workplace, and events in the past few weeks have made clear that the judicial branch is not immune,” Roberts wrote, without mentioning Kozinski by name.
Roberts had previously asked that a working group examine the judiciary’s workplace conduct policies, with a report expected by May 1. Roberts wrote that the group will examine whether changes are needed in a number of areas, from codes of conduct to the handling of misconduct complaints.
Vice Media, a company founded on a mission to chronicle sex, drugs, music and fashion, put two of its top executives on leave Tuesday after they were accused of sexual harassment.
The two executives are the media company's president, Andrew Creighton, and the head of its internal digital ad agency, Mike Germano, according to a memo from the company's chief financial officer, Sarah Broderick. Last month, The New York Times reported that women at the company had accused both men of harassment.
In early December, Vice fired three staff members who were accused of fostering a toxic workplace for women. The departures came not long after the Daily Beast detailed the claims of several women who described a difficult working environment, unwanted touching, hostility and limited opportunities for advancement.
Wildcats fire Rodriguez over harassments claims:
The Arizona Wildcats on Tuesday fired football coach Rich Rodriguez after six seasons in the wake of a sexual harassment allegation the university began investigating in October and a recent notice of a hostile-workplace lawsuit to be filed against the school.
"After conducting a thorough evaluation of our football program and its leadership, both on and off the field, President [Robert] Robbins and I feel it is in the best interest of the University of Arizona and our athletics department to go in a new direction," athletic director Dave Heeke said in a statement.
In a letter to the Arizona community, Heeke and Robbins said Arizona's Office of Institutional Equity retained the law firm of Cohen Dowd Quigley to investigate the allegation, which was made by the former administrative assistant to the 54-year-old Rodriguez. ESPN generally does not identity a person who has reported sexual harassment.
Forty-one years to the day that he took office, Sen. Orrin Hatch walks into the Senate on Wednesday as a lame duck after announcing that he will retire in early 2019.
Hatch’s decision came despite the urging of Senate colleagues and President Donald Trump, who had pushed the Utah Republican to run for an eighth term, and despite a $4.7 million balance in his campaign account and a fundraiser scheduled this weekend.
New bill to ban paperless voting: (really go read the whole article; this doesn’t do it justice, then go call your legislators and raise your voices!)
So a group of senators led by James Lankford (R-Okla.) wants to shore up the security of American voting systems ahead of the 2018 and 2020 elections. And the senators have focused on two major changes that have broad support from voting security experts.
The first objective is to get rid of paperless electronic voting machines. Computer scientists have been warning for more than a decade that these machines are vulnerable to hacking and can't be meaningfully audited. States have begun moving away from paperless systems, but budget constraints have forced some to continue relying on insecure paperless equipment. The Secure Elections Act would give states grants specifically earmarked for replacing these systems with more secure systems that use voter-verified paper ballots.
The legislation's second big idea is to encourage states to perform routine post-election audits based on modern statistical techniques. Many states today only conduct recounts in the event of very close election outcomes. And these recounts involve counting a fixed percentage of ballots. That often leads to either counting way too many ballots (wasting taxpayer money) or too few (failing to fully verify the election outcome).
Sheriff Clarke in Twitter prison:
Known for his incendiary rhetoric, former Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. took it a step too far over the weekend — and was briefly banned from Twitter as a result.
CNN reported Tuesday that the Twitter account for Clarke, a frequent surrogate for President Donald Trump, was placed in read-only mode until he deleted several tweets, including one in which he threatened to punch the media "in the nose" and "make them taste their own blood."
In the tweet, Clarke included a picture of one wrestler with his picture superimposed on it while kicking another wrestler bearing the red CNN logo. A third wrestler with the Republican president's picture on it held the CNN wrestler.
Diabetes drug shows promise for Alzheimer’s:
Promising new animal research suggests a drug originally developed to treat diabetes significantly reverses memory loss and brain degeneration in mice with a rodent version of Alzheimer’s disease. If the same is proven true in humans, the drug could one day be used as a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease and other memory-related illnesses.
In the study, published online this week in Brain Research, scientists from Lancaster University in England used lab mice to test how effective a diabetes drug known as a triple receptor was in treating Alzheimer’s disease. The mice in the study were specifically created to express certain genes associated with Alzheimer's disease in humans. The researchers waited for the mice to age before giving them the drug, therefore giving their disease some time to develop and damage the animal’s brain. Once given the drug, the animals were then made to conduct a maze test designed to measure their memory.
Results revealed that after being given the drug, aged mice who already had signs of a rodent version of Alzheimer’s disease showed improved learning and memory skills. The results were also seen on a biological level, and these mice displayed reduced amounts of plaque buildup in the brain, a major hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. In addition, these mice also had reduced levels of chronic inflammation in their brains, overall slower rates of brain nerve cell loss and increased brain nerve cell protection.
Drones are saving lives:
In remote regions of Rwanda, life-saving blood is getting where it needs to be faster thanks to a new drone delivery service. A partnership between Silicon Valley robotics company Zipline and the country's health ministry has reduced delivery time of vital supplies from four hours to an average of about 30 minutes, The Guardian reported.
Zipline is delivering blood to 12 regional hospitals, each serving about half a million people, from a base in eastern Rwanda. Over the past year, Zipline drones have delivered more than 5,500 units of blood.
When a doctor or medical professional is in need of blood, they send a WhatsApp message to Zipline or log on to the company's order site. When a Zipline drone is en route, they are sent a confirmation text. A drone flies to the hospital at up to 60 mph. When it is within one minute of its destination, the doctor will receive a text message. The drone then drops the package, which parachutes into a designated area near the hospital, before returning to its base, according to Zipline.
Solar windows coming soon?
Researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory have designed efficient and cost-effective solar windows by combining quantum dot technology with a double pane structure.
The layers of quantum dots are tweaked to absorb only part of the solar spectrum, allowing the double-pane solar windows to generate energy while providing shade and insulation.
Scientists suggest the new technology will lower the cost of solar electricity.