Humans apparently targeted big species for meat, while smaller creatures such as rodents escaped, according the report examining trends over 125,000 years.
In North America, for instance, the mean body mass of land-based mammals has shrunk to 7.6 kg (17 lbs) from 98.0 after humans arrived.
Source: Cow may be biggest mammal if humans keep up extinctions: study
Christine Lagarde said she had told Prime Minister Narendra Modi that he did not mention the women of India enough in his speech to the summit and “it’s not just a question of talking about them”.
“I was hoping he would have said a bit more. Wish he had talked a bit about girls and Indian women,” she had then told NDTV.
Source: Kathua rape: PM Narendra Modi Served An Uncomfortable Message By IMF Boss Christine Lagarde
“Most developed nations now offer universal preschool – even China has committed to pre-K for every 4-year-old by 2020,” Steven Barnett, the institute’s senior co-director, said on a press call Tuesday.
“Meanwhile, the United States has made little progress. This is no way to compete globally now or in the future. Our first step back to leadership is quality preschool.”
The report, “The State of Preschool 2017,” takes into account enrollment, funding, teacher qualifications and other indicators of program quality.
Source: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: The State of Preschool in the U.S. | Education News | US News
Flooded with supply, prices are dropping so much that some dispensaries in the Portland area are selling the drug for $4 a gram. That’s less than half the cost of a bargain-basement batch in other US cities where marijuana is legal, like Denver and Seattle.
But 1,824 marijuana-related business licenses have already been issued, including 981 production operations. Another 967 production licenses are in various stages of approval by the state and could come online later this year.
Source: Growing pains: how Oregon wound up with way more pot than it can smoke | Society | The Guardian
Before signing the Fair Housing Act of 1968 into law, Johnson called it “among the proudest [moments] of my presidency.” Because of it, he predicted, “Negro families [will] no longer suffer the humiliation of being turned away because of their race.”
Then, reality set in: Uneven enforcement, deep-seated, cultural bias and the bill’s own flaws allowed bigoted mortgage bankers and unscrupulous landlords to preserve – and profit from – the status quo.
Source: U.S. Is Still Segregated Even After Fair Housing Act | The Report | US News
President Trump’s cybersecurity coordinator, Rob Joyce, revealed this week that he would vacate his post and return to the National Security Agency (NSA), ending a 14-month stint at the White House.
News of his planned departure came less than a week after the resignation of homeland security adviser Tom Bossert. The two men had become the face of the White House’s cybersecurity efforts, providing a line of communication between lawmakers and private industry to the West Wing.
Source: Staff changes upend White House cyber team | TheHill
Republicans are retreating from calls to repeal ObamaCare ahead of this year’s midterm elections.
Less than a year after the GOP gave up on its legislative effort to repeal the law, Democrats are going on offense on this issue, attacking Republicans for their votes as they hope to retake the House majority.
A Myanmar police chief ordered officers to “trap” a Reuters reporter arrested in December, telling them to meet the journalist at a restaurant and give him “secret documents”, prosecution witness Police Captain Moe Yan Naing told a court on Friday.
The court in Yangon has been holding hearings since January to decide whether the pair will be charged under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison.
Source: Myanmar policeman describes ‘trap’ to arrest Reuters reporter
The United States has a vast amount of deadly plutonium, which terrorists would love to get their hands on. Under another agreement, Washington and Moscow each are required to render unusable for weapons 34 metric tons of plutonium. The purpose is twofold: keep the material out of the hands of bad guys, and eliminate the possibility of the two countries themselves using it again for weapons.
An Energy Department website says the two countries combined have 68 metric tons designated for destruction – enough to make 17,000 nuclear weapons. But the United States has no permanent plan for what to do with its share.
Plutonium must be made permanently inaccessible because it has a radioactive half-life of 24,000 years.
Source: America’s nuclear headache: old plutonium with nowhere to go
Nikki Haley was just doing her job.
On Sunday (April 15), Haley, who serves as the US ambassador to the United Nations, announced that the Trump administration was planning to impose new sanctions on Russia. Haley said the sanctions would go into effect the following day.
But unbeknownst to Haley, the White House had reportedly decided to change direction—without telling her.
In an effort to fix the situation, and hopefully hide the evidence that no one in the Trump administration knows what’s going on, the White House resorted to a classic move: Blame the mistake on the woman involved.
Given Haley’s refusal to be patronized, the time of her exit may be drawing near.