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Columbia Had ‘Whites Only’ Scholarship
Columbia University campus in New York City. (Diane Bondareff/AP)
Holdover from 1920 gift.
Nice to know Columbia was doing its part for affirmative action—oh, never mind. Columbia University still has a “whites only” scholarship on its books—and it may even be illegal, according to papers filed in a Manhattan court. Benefactor Lydia C. Roberts, the heir to her husband’s medical-patents company, had left the bulk of her $509,000 estate to Columbia in 1920, but she stipulated the student who receives the scholarship must be white, from Iowa, not be studying law (we might understand that one), and must return to Iowa for two years after graduating. Oh, and none of the stipulations can be changed without a court order. The scholarship, now estimated to be worth about $800,000, has not been given since 1997, and it’s unclear if Columbia followed all the rules in the years it awarded it.
Gosnell ran a criminal enterprise, not a health-care facility, write Dayle Steinberg and Eric Ferrero of Planned Parenthood.
By now, most Americans have heard about Kermit Gosnell, who was convicted in Pennsylvania for three murders, one case of involuntary manslaughter, and a slew of other charges. It is a shocking and gruesome case.
Kermit Gosnell, 72 (right), gets escorted to a van leaving the Criminal Justice Center after getting convicted on three counts of first degree murder on May 13, 2013, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Yong Kim/Philadelphia Inquirer/MCT, via Landov)
The indictment against him laid out nearly 300 pages of brutal crimes against desperate women who came to him seeking medical care, including safe abortion, and were instead subjected to unthinkable conditions.
Akien Scott. (Bill Haber/AP)
19 people were injured in shooting.
New Orleans police on Monday identified the first suspect in the shooting on Mother’s Day that injured 19 people, including two 10-year-olds. Akein Scott, 19, has been positively identified by more than one witness, police said. Police searched two locations for Scott, both of which are just blocks from the shooting site. Ronal Serpas, New Orleans’s police superintendent, said Scott has been arrested before on charges of firearms possession, narcotics possession, and resisting arrest. Serpas said it was too early to know if Scott was the only shooter.
Preventing the Next Sandy
Humans may not be able to stop climate change. But they can take preventative action to mitigate it’s effects. The Rockefeller Foundation is kicking off a $100 million project to make cities more resilient in the face of more powerful storms and rising tides.
The foundation associated with one of America’s most iconic, historical names is launching a challenge to bring better resilience and sustainability to cities around the world. The Rockefeller Foundation announced Tuesday that it will invest $100 million into cities worldwide to help make them better equipped for the ecological challenges they may face in the future.
Waves washed over the seawall at Battery Park in New York during Hurricane Sandy. (Craig Ruttle/AP)
“In this world today we will not be able to predict or prevent every catastrophe, take climate change—extreme weather, raging fires, vicious storms,” Rockefeller Foundation President Judith Rodin told the Daily Beast. “That’s where resilience comes in. We can prevent their catastrophic impact much better, by implementing resilience strategies that let us buffer those shocks more effectively.”
AP: ‘Unprecedented Intrusion’ by Govt.
AP President and CEO Pruitt on April 15 in Orlando, Fla., (Julie Fletcher/AP)
White House insists “no knowledge” of phone-records seizure.
Excuse us, we have to go check our phone records right now. The Associated Press on Monday slammed the government for the “massive and unprecedented intrusion” of seizing the news agency’s phone records, while the White House insisted it had “no knowledge” of the Justice Department’s operation. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington confirmed Monday that it had issued subpoenas of the AP’s phone records in an effort to track down a source who had disclosed an alleged Yemeni terrorist plot. The White House tried to distance itself from the latest public-relations disaster, with Press Secretary Jay Carney insisting that it is not involved. The Justice Department, for its part, said it values press freedoms, but that the public interest outweighed them. Well, that’s not really comforting.
The Seven Tastiest Insects
Pine nuts, bacon, soft-shell crab—these are the flavors of caterpillars, beetles, and tarantulas, if you can believe it. On the heels of a U.N. report urging more insect consumption, Nina Strochlic rounds up the yummiest.
A new study from the United Nations is encouraging people to take a break from red meat, poultry, and fish and instead fill their plates with an alternative protein source: insects.
Supplementing a diet with bugs is not only nutritious but reduces pollution, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization writes. “Insects are everywhere and they reproduce quickly, and they have high growth and feed conversion rates and a low environmental footprint,” the report notes. Besides, they’re high in protein, vitamins, and minerals. Indeed, more than 2 billion people around the world already eat insects, but most Western countries have been slow to adopt the practice. The main problem? “Consumer disgust,” writes the agency.
L.M. Otero/AP
Why Women Went to Kermit Gosnell
The right has tried to turn Gosnell’s horror show into an argument against legal abortion. They have it exactly backwards.
The conviction of Kermit Gosnell on three counts of first degree murder, one count of involuntary manslaughter, and hundreds of lesser charges should make it very clear that the horrors he committed in his squalid West Philadelphia clinic were illegal. This should be crushingly obvious, but it’s been ignored by the right-wing pundits who have tried to turn this deeply disturbing case into an argument against legal abortion.
Yong Kim/Philadelphia Daily News/MCT, via Landov
This has always been a story about illegal abortion, a phrase that appears over and over in the Gosnell Grand Jury report. It’s about what women will subject themselves to when they see no other option for ending an unwanted pregnancy. It’s about the appalling lack of health care for poor women in this country, especially when it comes to abortion, which, thanks to the Hyde Amendment, isn’t covered by Medicaid. It’s about murdered babies from pregnancies that never should have gone as far as they did.
I Saw the Shooter
Medical student Jarratt Pytell was dancing with the crowd at the Mother’s Day parade when he heard a sound like fireworks. He describes seeing the young gunman—and responding to some of the 19 wounded.
We met up with the second line just past Claiborne and just started dancing. At that time they hadn’t starting marching yet, so we watched some of the little kids dancing and danced along with the music. There were hundreds of people out there. The police had the street shut down, and they led the parade. As it started, we jumped in behind the third band and started dancing down the street. I danced with a mom holding her daughter. I turned and saw my better half, Emily, letting loose like no one was looking. It was the unique New Orleans experience that our friend Matt had wanted to show his mom, who was visiting from out of town. Black, white, young, old, and everyone in between, just dancing in the street and wishing each other a happy Mother’s Day.
Jarratt Pytell (right) comforts a shooting victim while awaiting EMS at the intersection of Frenchmen and North Villere Streets after gunfire injured at least a dozen people, including a child, at a Mother's Day second-line parade on May 12. (Lauren McGaughty/Nola.com, via Landov)
The parade was moving back toward the Marigny, and we crawled across Claiborne. The parade took a right onto a side street, and everyone packed in a little closer, so the parade slowed down a bit. We hadn’t quite made it to the next street, Frenchmen, when we heard a sound like firecrackers, like the little Black Cats that explode in quick succession. We were on the left side of the street, about 10 feet from the next block.
Rapes Escalate in the Ranks
Unreported sexual assaults soared in the ranks last year, even as the problem has reached the White House. Jesse Ellison reports.
Tonight marks the television premiere of The Invisible War, an Oscar-nominated documentary feature and last year’s winner of the prestigious audience award at the Sundance Film Festival.
Depending on your perspective, the timing is either a stroke of very good luck or an unfortunate embarrassment. The film, which will be broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens, is a searing examination of military sexual assault, an issue so endemic within the armed forces that a female soldier is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed in combat. Its television premiere comes just as the problem has been receiving more attention from the media and politicians—all the way up to President Obama himself—than perhaps ever before.
It started last Sunday, with the arrest of Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski, the head of the Air Force’s sexual-assault-prevention program, on charges of sexual battery after he allegedly groped a woman in a Washington, D.C., parking lot. Two days later the Department of Defense released its annual report on sexual assaults within the ranks, announcing that there were nearly 3,400 reported incidents of sexual assault in 2012 alone, up 6 percent from 2011. But the report also included the results of a survey—conducted every two years—that found that the actual number of assaults was far greater: an estimated 26,000, up from 19,000 in 2010. By Thursday, outrage over the skyrocketing figures had reached such a fever pitch that the White House convened a group of lawmakers to meet with senior-level staffers, including Valerie Jarrett and the first lady’s chief of staff, who reportedly asked for immediate executive-level changes that could be made to address the ongoing problem.
Chasing the Tornado
KFOR meteorologist Emily Sutton says she’s never seen anything like what she saw on Monday while storm chasing the tornado that hit Moore, OK.
U.S. News
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Moore Has Been Hit Before
In 1999, the Oklahoma town was hit with a tornado that clocked the highest winds ever on... More
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Photos of Moore, Oklahoma, After the Tornadoes
At least 37 people have been confirmed dead after a tornado ripped through Moore, OK,... More
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Gay Shooting No Shocker
Mark Carson was shot because he was gay.... More
Chris Christie, Climate Change Denier
Months after his state was ravaged by extreme weather, the New Jersey governor is now publicly denying climate change. Expect more of that kind of idiocy as he gears up for 2016.






