"Black Americans and women continue to face discrimination in skilled trades" PBS NewsHour 3/12/2021
Excerpt
SUMMARY: The winter storms that devastated Texas last month led to a major water crisis. But for weeks afterward, there weren't enough plumbers to help customers with the damage. All of this underscores the need for more of these skilled workers. But for women and workers of color, there can be even greater obstacles. Paul Solman has the story for our series "Work Shift."
NOTE: This article was copied from the e-newspaper, there no link to article.
"Women rule this world" by August Brown, Los Angeles Times 3/15/2021
Female artists, particularly Black ones, dominate ceremony
Megan Thee Stallion, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish were the big winners at the 63rd Grammy Awards on Sunday, after a year of lockdown and protests that rattled artists, fans and the music business.
The big four awards were split among some of the top women in music. Houston rapper Megan Thee Stallion won for best new artist; singer-songwriter-guitarist H.E.R. took song of the year for her protest anthem “I Can’t Breathe”; Swift won the album of the year trophy for her acclaimed quarantine record “Folklore”; and Eilish, who swept last year’s top categories, repeated her victory in record of the year for her moody “Everything I Wanted.”
Beyoncé, who won four awards on Sunday, broke the all-time record for most Grammys for a female artist. Her 28th Grammy topped country-bluegrass artist Alison Krauss, who’d previously held the record with 27 wins. She also tied the legendary Quincy Jones for second on the all-time list for most Grammy wins. (Hungarian composer Georg Solti won 31 Grammys.)
Beyoncé won for R&B performance, for her Juneteenth single “Black Parade”; rap song and rap performance, for her feature on fellow Houstonian Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage”; and music video, alongside her daughter Blue Ivy Carter, for “Brown Skin Girl.”
Megan Thee Stallion won three Grammys on Sunday, while Eilish took home two awards, as did Fiona Apple, for her acclaimed “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” album and its track “Shameika.” Dua Lipa, nominated for six Grammys, won for pop solo album.
The first pandemic-era Grammys arrived battered from all sides. COVID-19’s wreckage included shuttered venues, tours grounded and lifelong pros left destitute. This year’s Grammys’ “In Memoriam” segment reportedly had 800 industry veterans in consideration for inclusion alongside beloved artists Little Richard, John Prine, Kenny Rogers and dozens of others.
Add that to a dramatic change of the guard for the telecast, from the Grammys’ 40-year producer Ken Ehrlich to 39-year-old British TV executive Ben Winston. Then throw in a public reckoning over how the Recording Academy (and its tightly guarded 12,000 voters and genre committees) declined to nominate R&B/pop star The Weeknd, who in turn called the Grammys “corrupt” and vowed never to allow his music to be submitted for consideration.
Given the chaos behind the scenes, the nearly four-hour show, hosted by “The Daily Show” host Trevor Noah, made an effective case that music can be both a balm amid despair, and a rallying cry for the oppressed during times of racial and social upheaval.
Some Grammy favorites collected major awards. Swift won for album of the year for “Folklore,” her quarantine-embodying LP made in relative isolation that, with its lonely moods and storytelling, defined a frightful summer. She’s now tied with Stevie Wonder, Frank Sinatra and Paul Simon for most album of the year Grammys, and she became the only woman to win the award three times.
When last year’s Grammy darling Eilish accepted the award for record of the year, she spent most of her speech shouting out Megan Thee Stallion, who was nominated for “Savage” featuring Beyoncé.
“This is really embarrassing, Megan you deserve this,” Eilish said. “Genuinely, this goes to her, can we just cheer for Megan?”
The pandemic-mandated reduced scale and sense of intimacy at this year’s Grammys worked in its favor. From the start, host Noah, situated on a platform outside Staples Center with just a few masked stars at tables in front of him, acknowledged the lack of glitz. The telecast was “the biggest outdoor event of the year besides the storming of the Capitol,” he quipped. As Megan Thee Stallion — one of the night’s big winners — accepted her award for best new artist, her speech was briefly drowned out by a car speeding through downtown L.A.
With a public skeptical of the Grammys’ backroom voting processes, the ceremony argued for its more noble intentions.
Swift leaned into the cottagecore aesthetic of “Folklore” by performing in a hobbit shed with producers Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner. Eilish, Harry Styles and Haim played for one another in-the-round, which made for good-hearted reaction shots of artists looking as if they’d happily wandered into the wrong rehearsal room.
Throughout the night, the Academy gave the spotlight over to Black music, which thrummed in the streets of last year’s protests against police violence.
Singer Mickey Guyton, nominated for country solo performance, played a regal and resplendent performance of “Black Like Me.” On the convention center decks, rapper Lil Baby re-created the scene outside the burning Atlanta fast-food restaurant where Rayshard Brooks was killed during his performance of “The Bigger Picture.” And H.E.R.’s “I Can’t Breathe,” a seething yet vulnerable protest ballad, won song of the year in a major upset.
“I think people are going to think of this song when they think of Breonna Taylor, when they think of all of the people that we’re still fighting for,” H.E.R. said .
“As an artist, I believe it’s my job, and all of our jobs to reflect the times,” Beyoncé said in her acceptance speech for R&B performance. “It’s been such a difficult time. So I wanted to uplift, encourage, celebrate all of the beautiful Black queens and kings that continue to inspire me and inspire the whole world.”
Not all of the show was so weighty. The debut of Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak’s ‘70s-soul-indebted duo Silk Sonic felt as inviting as a fine robe and a glass of brandy, and Doja Cat’s disco romp “Say So” showcased her cyborg-precise dancing. Though Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B’s live performance of their sex-positive anthem “WAP” did without its wonderfully filthy hook on TV, they had a lively go at it beneath a five-story stiletto heel.
While Grammy voters’ intentions and the telecast’s choices don’t always align, the Grammys tried to mirror pop’s borderless and language-agnostic present, giving formidable screen time to Puerto Rican movimiento star Bad Bunny (who took home his first “gringo Grammy,” for Latin pop or urban album) and to South Korean megastars BTS.
BTS lost to Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande in pop duo/group performance, but played a high-kicking set that consoled fans who vowed that BTS was already bigger than the Grammys anyway.
Many awards presentations were, rather than handoffs from fellow pop stars, delivered from the back bars of threatened clubs like the Troubadour and Hotel Cafe in L.A. and the beloved Apollo in New York City. Hearing from employees there on the highest-profile night of music was affecting and urgent.
“People don’t want to be anywhere else but [The Troubadour],” said the club’s night manager, Rachelle Erratchu. “People are going to talk about those shows 40, 50 years later.”
But if legacy was on the Academy’s minds, they still must confront a structure that’s opaque at best and suspicious at worst to the superstar acts they need to keep the show relevant.
“Join in, work with us, not against us,” Recording Academy interim chief executive Harvey Mason Jr. said in his telecast speech. “We might not be able to get it right 100% of the time, but we will preserve music and educate the next generation and advocate for the rights of all creatives.… Our work is important because music is important.”
Ilana Kaplan contributed to this report.
SUMMARY: When accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail, some of his alleged victims reacted with outrage that he had robbed them of the chance to face him in court. But more than a dozen of Epstein’s accusers told their stories to a federal judge in Manhattan on Tuesday instead. Amna Nawaz talks to The Washington Post's Renae Merle about what the women shared.
SUMMARY: A connection has long been established between domestic violence and murder. But a new report by The Washington Post uncovers just how close that link is, nearly half of women who were murdered in the past decade were killed by a current or former partner. Katie Zezima, the story’s lead reporter, joins John Yang to discuss the disturbing data and new efforts to intervene before homicide occurs.
SUMMARY: Tuesday's primaries spanned the country and the political spectrum, from more liberal Oregon, to conservative Idaho and Nebraska, to swing-state Pennsylvania, where wins by women were particularly notable. Lisa Desjardins learns more from Dave Davies of WHYY in Philadelphia.
SUMMARY: In the years after Rwanda's genocide, how did women come to make up a large portion of the nation's parliament? Author and activist Swanee Hunt says their women's movement that grew out of necessity. Hunt, a former ambassador and founding director of the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard's Kennedy School, gives her Brief but Spectacular take on women waging peace.
SUMMARY: Stocks plunged on Friday over fears that the Federal Reserve will accelerate interest rate hikes. The sell-off was driven by news that the economy added a net of 200,000 jobs in January, with wages rising at the fastest pace in more than eight years. Judy Woodruff gets analysis from Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist of Charles Schwab.
SUMMARY: The job market and the economy are growing stronger and at a healthy pace, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen told PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff [on] Friday as she wrapped up her four-year term on a momentous economic day.
The day started with a solid jobs report showing 200,000 new jobs last month and better wage growth. But the Dow Jones continued plunging during a brutal week, finishing the day down more than 665 points or about 2.5 percent. It capped the worst week for the Dow in two years.
But Yellen was focused on the long-term picture, saying that for “almost all groups in the American economy … you’re seeing plentiful jobs and wages beginning to rise at a slightly faster pace.”
In the NewsHour interview, recorded before the stock market closed, Yellen also warned that stock market valuations are elevated beyond their usual historic levels, including the ratio of price to earnings. Yellen stopped short of characterizing the market’s rise in recent months as a bubble.
Even as the market was dropping, Yellen stressed that the financial system is more resilient now than it was during the financial crisis of 2008. Still, she said, “investors should be careful and, I would say, diversified in their investments.”
Yellen also struck a sober tone on other trends in the economy. She said productivity — a key barometer watched by the Fed — has been weaker than hoped. She also said the pace of new firms being created over the past decade was slower than usual.
SUMMARY: In the film "The Post," editor Ben Bradlee and publisher Katharine Graham must obtain the Pentagon Papers and then decide whether to defy a court order by publishing the classified history of the Vietnam War. A story about a consequential moment in American history, press freedom and national security, it's also about Graham finding her way in a male-dominated world. Jeffrey Brown reports.
SUMMARY: Every food story is an economic story, says author Laura Shapiro. In "What She Ate," Shapiro offers tales of female empowerment or self-definition by way of the kitchen and dinner table, cooking up portraits of Eleanor Roosevelt, Eva Braun, Helen Gurley Brown, and others. Economics correspondent Paul Solman reports.
SUMMARY: Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is considering dialing down federal guidance for how colleges and universities should handle sexual misconduct investigations. The Obama administration issued new requirements in 2011 changing how schools should handle investigations on their campuses, drawing both praise and criticism. William Brangham learns more from Anya Kamenetz of NPR.
SUMMARY: Caroline Kitchener grew up hearing that strong women don't need to rely on a partner to have a happy and successful life. But after graduating college, her values clashed with real life: She decided to move to a new city with her boyfriend. Kitchener, author of "Post Grad: Five Women and Their First Year Out of College," shares her humble opinion.
SUMMARY: Until recently, women were barred from U.S. military combat jobs. Today females are volunteering for the most physically and mentally grueling Marine roles. But is the Corps helping or hurting women recruits' readiness by separating training from males? In a two-part series, William Brangham follows three female Marine recruits as they embark on tougher training than they have ever undergone.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): For decades, women have played important roles in the U.S. military, but, until recently, they were blocked from front-line combat positions.
But under orders from the secretary of defense, women can now try out for all combat jobs in all services.
Over the past several months, we have followed three female pioneers striving for these positions within the U.S. Marine Corps, considered the toughest of the services.
Producer Dan Sagalyn and correspondent William Brangham have the first of two reports.
DRILL SARGENT: You should be standing at the division of attention. That means your heels are touching, feet at a 45-degree angle.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour): Eighteen-year-old Rebekah Wolff's life is about to turn upside-down. She and a group of fellow recruits have just arrived at Parris Island, South Carolina. It's day one of Marine Corps boot camp.
DRILL SARGENT: Your mouth is shut!
RECRUITS: Aye, sir!
DRILL SARGENT: I said, do you understand me?
RECRUITS: Aye, sir!
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: They now start thirteen weeks of grueling, disorienting, physically stressful training.
Rebekah Wolff is one of the young female recruits who wants to join the fight to go into one of the jobs that for generations had been blocked to women, until now.
Low-altitude air defense is what she wants to do. It's basically shooting shoulder-fired Stinger missiles at enemy aircraft.
That's what you want to be doing, shooting Stinger missiles?
REBEKAH WOLFF, Marine Corps Recruit: Yes.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Why that?
REBEKAH WOLFF: Because it'd be cool.
(LAUGHTER)
REBEKAH WOLFF: Not a lot of females have had that opportunity until now, really, so that's exciting.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Of course, that's a long way off. For now, she's not only got to prove herself at boot camp, but she will have to pass tougher physical standards than females have ever had to meet before. On the first night, after filling out some paperwork, recruits are required to make one phone call home.
They're instructed to shout five scripted lines into the phone, nothing more.
WOMAN: Thank you for your support! Goodbye for now!
SUMMARY: For generations combat jobs in the U.S. military were blocked to women, but not anymore. The question now is can women meet the same rigorous standards as the men in order to qualify for frontline jobs? William Brangham has the second story on women in combat roles.
SUMMARY: A 2005 tape of Donald Trump speaking lewdly about women and describing sexual assault has gone far beyond politics, sparking a national discussion and an avalanche of reactions on social media after Kelly Oxford encouraged people to share their stories. John Yang leads a discussion with Oxford, Anita Hill of Brandeis University and Mike Wise of The Undefeated.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Almost a week after its release, the leaked tape of Donald Trump boasting of sexually harassing and assaulting women continues to raise issues that go well beyond presidential politics.
John Yang has that story.
BILLY BUSH, “Access Hollywood”: Yes. The Donald has scored! Whoa, my man!
JOHN YANG (NewsHour): The impact of this 2005 tape of Donald Trump and NBC personality Billy Bush has gone far beyond politics. It's sparked a national discussion over misogyny and sexual assault.
DONALD TRUMP (R), Presidential Candidate: I better use some 'Tic Tacs,' just in case I start kissing her. You know, I'm automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. I just kiss. I don't even wait. And, when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything.
BILLY BUSH: Whatever you want.
DONALD TRUMP: Grab them by the (EXPLETIVE DELETED).
(LAUGHTER)
DONALD TRUMP: I can do anything.
JOHN YANG: While Trump apologized for the remarks during Sunday night's debate, he also tried to dismiss them.
DONALD TRUMP: Certainly, I'm not proud of it. But this is locker room talk.
JOHN YANG: He also raised decades-old accusations against his opponent's husband, former President Bill Clinton.
DONALD TRUMP: Mine are words, and his was action. His was what he's done to women.
JOHN YANG: Hours before, the Republican nominee appeared with women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct. None of those accusations, it should be said, have ever resulted in any criminal charges.
This all comes amid a heightened sensitivity about sexual assault and violence. There's the pending trial of comedian Bill Cosby on sexual assault charges in Pennsylvania and other similar allegations against him. And there was the furor over the six-month jail sentence handed earlier this year to Brock Turner, a Stanford University swimmer who was convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman.
Some Trump supporters have suggested that the reaction to the Trump tape is overblown.
SCOTT BAIO, Actor: And ladies out there, this is what guys talk about when you're not around. So, if you're offended by it, grow up. (yuk, gag)
JOHN YANG: But the tape prompted an avalanche of reaction on social media.
Author Kelly Oxford shared her own sexual assault experience, and encouraged others to do the same. Her callout swiftly went viral. More than 30 million people have either left a response or visited her Twitter page since Friday night, a nationwide catharsis of painful experiences.
And now for more on this, Kelly Oxford joins us now from Burbank, California, along with Anita Hill, who accused Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his confirmation hearings. Hill is now a law professor at Brandeis University. And here in the studio, Mike Wise, senior writer for ESPN's “The Undefeated.”
SUMMARY: She was never verbally or physically threatened or restrained. But at age 19, Nina Van Harn felt like she couldn't say no when she was expected to marry a man chosen by her family. And she is not alone in her experience. In a two-year period, it's estimated that there were 3,000 such forced marriage cases in the United States. Special correspondent Gayle Tzemach Lemmon reports.
GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON, special correspondent : For Nina Van Harn, raising her children today is a radical departure from her own upbringing.
NINA VAN HARN, Married at 19: My childhood was part magical, and part complicated.
GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON: She was raised in rural Michigan on a 40-acre farm in a tight-knit community that practiced a conservative form of evangelical Christianity. Its members largely kept to themselves, more “Little House on the Prairie” than modern-day America.
Growing up, she always knew one day was coming. She recorded its arrival in her diary.
NINA VAN HARN: “Dear Kit (ph)” — that was the name of the girl in the journal — “You will never guess what happened today. This morning after breakfast, papa sat Naomi (ph) and I down at the kitchen table and nailed us both with a load of bricks. He believes he found husbands for both of us.”
GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON: Van Harn had turned 19. She was legally an adult. There was no gun to her head, no chains around her wrists. But because of lifelong pressures from her family and her upbringing, she considers herself one of thousands of American women and girls forced into marriage each year.
NINA VAN HARN: I knew that I wasn't going to say no. This was God's will. God had spoken. And it was just not even an option. I didn't think consciously in my head 'I'm being forced.'
SUMMARY: Former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson was the first woman to accuse network co-founder Roger Ailes of sexual harassment. She was not the last: a subsequent flood of allegations forced Ailes to resign. As the company investigates, Judy Woodruff interviews former network news executive Shelley Ross and Vanity Fair's Sarah Ellison about the case and the larger issue of workplace sexual misconduct.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): An update on the fallout at FOX News over allegations that its co-founder, Roger Ailes, sexually harassed women employees for years.
Ailes resigned in late July with a reported $40 million severance package, that after a lawsuit by former FOX anchor Gretchen Carlson alleged that her show was canceled because she'd rebuffed sexual advances from Ailes.
In the following weeks, a growing number of women, including prime-time anchor Megyn Kelly, reportedly came forward with similar stories of impropriety. Ailes has called Ms. Carlson's accusations false. And an internal investigation by FOX's parent company is still under way.
For a closer look, not only at this case, but at the wider matter of sexual harassment in the workplace, we turn to Sarah Ellison, a contributing editor at “Vanity Fair.” She recently reported on the Ailes allegations. And Shelley Ross, she's a former network television news executive, best known for her 17-year tenure at ABC News. She recently wrote about her own professional experiences with Roger Ailes, and the news business at large, in The Daily Beast.
And we welcome both of you to the program.
And we should note at the outset, Roger Ailes back in the news today because of a New York Times report that he's now advising Donald Trump's campaign. And we should say the campaign denies that.
But, Sarah Ellison, I want to turn to you first.
What is the state of what is known about Roger Ailes' alleged harassment of women at FOX News?
SARAH ELLISON, Vanity Fair: Well, we know — largely, what we know is what we have learned from our reporting, which is that the internal investigation that is ongoing that you referred to earlier, has identified at least women in the double digits who have come forward and spoken to the internal investigation.
And we know that it was something that implicated Ailes certainly. There are people who have come out and told their stories, but there are people who have not yet come forward, and I think that we're going to see more women, even more women come forward in the coming days.
SUMMARY: As Hillary Clinton makes history with her nomination Tuesday night, Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff speak with two other prominent women in politics, Kamala Harris, Attorney General of California and Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill. ), about the hurdles that remain for women running for office.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): We mark this historic night with two women who have been trailblazers in their own right.
Kamala Harris is Attorney General of California. She is the first woman and first African-American and first Indian-American to hold that office, and she is running this year for the U.S. Senate. And Representative Cheri Bustos of Illinois was the first woman elected to Congress from her district. She now works to elect other woman candidates.
Welcome to you both.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Welcome.
GWEN IFILL: I want to ask you both to think back to 1984. We were just asking Nancy Pelosi about this idea, the big breakthrough, when Geraldine Ferraro became the vice presidential candidate for the first time.
Cheri Bustos, how different is it to be a woman candidate now than it was in 1984?
REP. CHERI BUSTOS (D-Ill. ): I still think there are challenges.
I'm vice chairman of the Recruiting Committee for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. So, I recruit candidates all over the country. And now I'm vice chair of what is called the Red to Blue Committee.
We have 38 people who are on that list of seats where we think we have an opportunity to pick those up for Democrats. Half of those are women. There are still challenges when we're looking at women running for office. And I think how we're going to correct that is what's going on right here.
When we get a woman in the White House, I think that it is going to be easier to get women to run for office. And I hope that we make some tremendous gains over the years.
KAMALA HARRIS, California Attorney General: I agree.
I think that — and, also, there's a significance to the nomination of Hillary Clinton that actually relates to advice my mother gave us when we were growing up, my sister and me. And she would say, “Kamala, you may be the first to do many things. Make sure you're not the last.”
And so there is that thing about the way that Hillary Clinton has actually lived her professional life that is also about mentorship. It's about encouraging other women to actually go forward and do it, knowing that they can succeed.
Equally important is what Michelle Obama said last night. The significance of Hillary Clinton breaking the ceiling is the significance of telling our sons, as well as our daughters, you can do anything, unburdened by who has done it before.
And that's an important point to make to everybody, not just girls, not just women, not just people of a certain race. It's telling everyone, anyone can do whatever they want. It is all possible if you work hard.
SUMMARY: For 20 years, the man at the helm of Fox News was it's CEO and founder Roger Ailes. On Thursday, Ailes stepped down after former anchor Gretchen Carlson filed a sexual harassment suit against him. Jane Hall, associate professor at American University's School of Communication, and Ken Doctor, media analyst for Newsonomics and Columnist for Politico, sit down with Judy Woodruff to discuss.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): It all unfolded quickly, in a matter of weeks, after former FOX anchor Gretchen Carlson filed a sexual harassment suit against Roger Ailes, longtime head of FOX News.
Ailes denied the charges. But 21st Century Fox, the cable network's parent company, hired a law firm to conduct an investigation. According to Carlson's lawyers, 20 or more other women then came forward with claims about Ailes' conduct, including Megyn Kelly, one of the network's star anchors.
Publicly, many other prominent on-air personalities at FOX, including Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Greta Van Susteren, backed Ailes and said they were unaware of any inappropriate behavior.
Rupert Murdoch issued a statement late yesterday without referring to the harassment charges, saying that: “Roger Ailes has made a remarkable contribution to our company and our country. Roger shared my vision of a great and independent television organization and executed it brilliantly over 20 great years.”
Roger Ailes, now 76, has been an influential figure for decades in Republican politics, as an adviser and strategist to Presidents Nixon, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. He created FOX News 20 years ago and built it into the most-watched cable news channel.
BRIT HUME, FOX News: More news is on the way, fair, balanced and unafraid.
JEFFREY BROWN: Promoted as an alternative to traditional mainstream media. It has been a huge moneymaker for its parent company, and a target for critics of its conservative tone and team.
Ailes said this in a 2004 interview with C-SPAN'S Brian Lamb:
ROGER AILES, Former FOX News Executive: Well, we have changed the business a little bit. I think FOX News has come on the scene and identified itself as fair and balanced. We try to do that every day. I think others, instead of trying to get more fair and balanced, probably are offended by that or worried about it.
JEFFREY BROWN: Rupert Murdoch and his sons, James and Lachlan, will now decide on a successor to Roger Ailes and the future of the network he built.
And joining me now, Jane Hall, a journalism professor at American University who previously served as a media reporter for The Los Angeles Times and commentator at FOX News, and Ken Doctor, who writes on the media business for Politico and on his blog, Newsonomics.
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JANE HALL, American University: Well, he is a brilliant television producer. And he created the jazzy graphics on the screen. He hired Bill O’Reilly. He brought in a number of people. He brought Megyn Kelly on board.
He had a great eye for talent. What I think has happened is his fair and balanced slogan is really not accurate. They have pounded home lines like government takeover, Obama is soft on terrorism, Hillary is crooked. As I said in the piece, I don’t think we would have Donald Trump if we didn’t have Roger Ailes.
But the network is absolutely a reflection of his vision. The only other person I can think of is Roone Arledge, who created ABC News and ABC Sports, who has had the same kind of impact. He merged politics, though, and a kind of bifurcated take-no-prisoners style that I think has hurt our discourse.
SUMMARY: They were living, breathing, walking, talking calculators who were key to America's early space program. And they were women — and largely forgotten. At the time, the supercomputers that NASA now uses to crunch its numbers didn't exist. Nathalia Holt looks to change the historic oversight in her new book, “Rise of the Rocket Girls.” Holt talked with Jeffrey Brown at the Los Angeles Book Festival.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Now the next addition to our summer reading list.
It's a look at some unsung American heroes in the space race, the women behind the scenes.
At the recent Los Angeles Book Festival, Jeffrey Brown sat down with Nathalia Holt, the author of “Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars.”
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): Tell me, who were the rocket girls?
NATHALIA HOLT, Author, “Rise of the Rocket Girls”: They are these unsung heroes who have touched just about every NASA mission that you can think of.
And yet they were mostly forgotten by NASA and by the Jet Propulsion Lab, which is where they worked. These women worked as computers. And so, before all of the digital devices we have today…
JEFFREY BROWN: Now, wait a minute. Explain that, because I know they're called literally 'computers.'
NATHALIA HOLT: This is their job title.
JEFFREY BROWN: Yes.
NATHALIA HOLT: You actually needed humans to be able to do the calculations.
And so this is what they started out working as. So, they only had pencil and paper, and these really loud mechanical calculators that couldn't do very much. And, from that, they were able to calculate an incredible number of trajectories for spacecraft, propellants.
JEFFREY BROWN: So they are literally computing and called computers.
NATHALIA HOLT: Exactly, yes.
JEFFREY BROWN: Before the age that we are now living in.
NATHALIA HOLT: But then, once the first IBMs came in, then they became the first computer programmers in the lab.
UC San Diego, Brazilian scientists infect pregnant mice with virus and detect harm to their babies
Scientists from Brazil and UC San Diego said Wednesday that they have produced the world's first direct evidence of how the Zika virus causes brain defects. Previous research had inferred this mechanism, but never demonstrated it in the lab.
In their new study, the Brazilian and San Diego scientists worked with pregnant mice. They found that the Brazilian strain of Zika crossed the placenta and into the mice's pups, reducing growth in the brain and the rest of the body.
The brain defects were similar to the microcephaly reported in some human babies whose mothers were infected with Zika during pregnancy.
Additionally, the researchers discovered that the virus caused similar damage in brain “organoids,” which are peasized structures grown from human stem cells. In essence, the study confirmed earlier findings of Zika's effects on brain organoids, including a report published this month by UC San Diego scientists.
But one strain of mice resisted Zika, the latest study found. The pups of those mice didn't show any signs of infection and tested negative for the virus. This suggests that the virus never crossed the placenta in those cases.
This particular strain mounted a “robust” antiviral immune response, the report said. If the effect can be extended to humans, it would help explain why some Zika-infected mothers give birth to newborns who have no detectable brain damage.
Virus has already achieved pandemic status
The new study was published in the journal Nature. It can be found at Nature International Weekly. Zika's stealthy attack on fetal brains makes it especially worrisome. Unlike Ebola's direct and deadly assault, Zika is rarely fatal. Most infected people don't feel any symptoms. So if a pregnant woman is infected, the real damage may not be known until her baby is born. Another concern: Zika can harm fetal development at all stages of a woman's pregnancy. The Brazilian strain of Zika is more aggressive than the African strain, said UC San Diego's Alysson Muotri, one of the new study's authors and a Brazilian native. The two strains share about 90 percent of their genes, meaning that the 10 percent difference is responsible for making the Brazilian version more dangerous.
That fact represents a monumental challenge to Brazil, which is set to host the Summer Olympics in less than three months. People will travel to Brazil from around the world, possibly become exposed to Zika and carry the virus back to their home countries. Zika is usually carried by mosquitoes of the genus Aedes, but it also can be transmitted sexually. The virus has already achieved pandemic status, and it has been reported throughout the United States. San Diego County's first case this year was announced in February. The patient was a woman who had become infected while in Colombia. She was not pregnant at the time and has recovered fully, public health officials said.
From Jan. 1 through May 4, a total of 472 Zika cases were reported in the U.S., including 40 in California, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Pregnant women were involved in 44 of those cases, and 10 of the infections were sexually transmitted.
There has been no “homegrown” Zika infection by mosquitoes in the United States, health officials said.
However, the potential for transmission is present in the form of the Aedes Aegypti mosquito. The species, a relatively recent arrival in San Diego County, is black with white stripes. Scientists not involved in the new study said it meshes with results from previous research and shows a way forward for potential counter- measures.
“This report has revealed a new approach to investigate the pathological outcomes of Zika infection in innovative experimental models and is the first of its kind,” said medical virologist Grant Hill-Cawthorne at the University of Sydney in Australia. His comments were provided by the Australian Science Media Center. “It has shown the experimental models used can reflect the clinical presentation of Zika infection and thus serve as an excellent basis to understand the disease process and evaluate strategies for prevention,” Hill-Cawthorne said. Dr. Nathalie MacDermott, a clinical research fellow at Imperial College London, said: “The study lends further support to the likelihood that the damage to the infant resulting in microcephaly, microencephaly and brain malformations occurs during the first and second trimesters of pregnancy, a time when the infant's brain is rapidly developing and nerve cells are migrating to the correct regions.” Her comments were provided by the United Kingdom-based Science Media Center.
