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☆ Ford pauses work on $3.5 billion battery plant in Michigan
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-25 | by ( David Shepardson | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

[1/4] Ford Motor Company Chief Executive Bill Ford announces Ford will partner with Chinese-based, Amperex Technology, to build an all-electric vehicle battery plant in Marshall, Michigan, during a press conference in Romulus, Michigan U.S., February 13, 2023. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook/File Photo Acquire Licensing RightsSept 25 (Reuters) - Ford Motor (F.N) said Monday it has paused work on a $3.5 billion battery plant in Michigan, citing concerns about its ability to competitively operate the plant. The announcement comes as Ford has repeatedly upped its offer to the United Auto Workers union in contract talks. Republicans in Congress have been probing Ford's battery plant plan in Marshall, Michigan, using technology from CATL (300750.SZ), the world's largest battery maker. Ford has been awaiting guidance to determine if batteries operated by the Marshall plant would run afoul of the requirements.

Persons: Bill Ford, Ford, Rebecca Cook, Joe Biden, Marshall, David Shepardson, Nick Zieminski Organizations: Ford Motor Company, Amperex Technology, Romulus , Michigan U.S, REUTERS, Ford, United Auto Workers, UAW, Detroit Three, Republicans, Marshall, Thomson Locations: Marshall , Michigan, Romulus , Michigan, Michigan, CATL

☆ Ford pausing work on $3.5 billion Michigan electric vehicle battery plant
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-25 | by ( Peter Valdes-Dapena | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

CNN —Ford is pausing work on a new, $3.5 billion electric vehicle battery plant in Michigan, even as the transition to electric vehicles has become a major sticking point in a United Auto Workers strike against automakers Ford, GM and Stellantis. No final decision has been made on whether the plant will, ultimately, become operational, said Ford spokesman T.R. If completed, the plant will be located on a 950-acre site in southern Michigan near the town of Marshall. The battery plant was planned to operate in addition to plants in Kentucky and Tennessee that Ford announced in 2021. Ford has said it plans to be able to produce 2 million electric vehicles globally by late 2026.

Persons: CNN — Ford, T.R, Reid, Ford’s, Ford, “, ”, ” Ford, Shawn Fain Organizations: CNN, United Auto Workers, Ford, GM, Marshall, General Motors, UAW, Ford Motor Co, Amperex Technology, SK Innovations Locations: Michigan, Marshall, United States, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Korea

Instead, the student population at West Virginia University has dropped 10% since 2015, while on-campus expansion continued. Lawmakers recently approved a higher education funding formula rewarding schools for degree attainment, workforce outcomes and graduate wages. Mary Manspeaker, an English Ph.D. student, said she left her home state at 18 because she didn't see opportunity in West Virginia. He said the conflict reflects the fundamental question in higher education right now: How do we assess value? "And it might be in cash, endowment and buildings, but it could arguably be in other things.”___Raby reported from Charleston, West Virginia.

Persons: Jim Justice, “ We’ve, ”, Gordon Gee, “, Gee, Joey Demes, Demes, Craig Blair, Marshall, hasn’t, Eric Tarr, Lisa Di Bartolomeo, Di Bartolomeo, ’ ”, Mary Manspeaker, Peter Lake, Lake, ” ___ Raby Organizations: West Virginia's, Gov, Marshall University, West Virginia University, Lawmakers, Marshall, WVU, —, American Federation of Teachers, ”, GOP, Republican, Center, Excellence, Higher Education Law, Florida's Stetson University Locations: MORGANTOWN, W.Va, West, East Coast, Morgantown, U.S, West Virginia, Appalachia, Charleston , West Virginia

☆ Fact Check-Five statements examined after first GOP primary debate
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-24 | by ( Reuters Fact Check | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Fox News hosted the Republican Party’s first primary debate ahead of the 2024 presidential election, with party front-runner Donald Trump absent from Wednesday night’s lineup. Reuters Fact Check examined five statements made during the debate. The debt rose to about $27.8 trillion when he left office on Jan. 20, 2021, representing a $7.9 trillion increase (here). After fetal viability, abortion is allowed in all three states if the pregnant person’s life or health is threatened, according to state legislation. After 24 weeks, abortion is permitted in New York if the pregnant person’s mental health is at risk (here).

Persons: Republican Party’s, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, “ Donald Trump, ” – Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Chris Christie, Hunter Biden, Biden Organizations: Fox News, Republican, United Nations, U.S . Environmental Protection Agency, New Jersey, Attorney’s, District of, Reuters, Florida Department of Law, Marshall Locations: U.S, America, South Carolina, California , New York, Illinois, California, New York, In Illinois, District, District of Delaware, Florida ”, Florida

☆ America has lost half its public companies since the 1990s. Here’s why
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-09 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

Why it matters: The count of publicly listed companies traded on US exchanges has fallen substantially from its peak in 1996. It’s not that America has half as many companies as 30 years ago – it’s that companies are increasingly staying private, largely outside the scrutiny of the public eye. Publicly listed companies are subject to regulatory oversight and disclosure requirements, which help ensure transparency and maintain investor confidence. “I think it’s natural that companies would delay going public when valuations get halved and investors are not enthusiastic about investing in new companies,” said Kennedy. Some private equity funds have even taken advantage of the bear market to buy up publicly traded companies.

Persons: Matthew Kennedy, “, ”, Kennedy, Torsten Slok, Janet Yellen, Matt Egan, Yellen, Antony Blinken, Elon Musk, Laxman Narasimhan, Jamie Dimon Organizations: CNN Business, Bell, New York CNN, Center for Research, Renaissance, Apple, Microsoft, Party, Apollo Global Management, “ Companies, Wells, China, CNN, China Business Council, FedEx, Pepsi, Walmart, Ford, JPMorgan Chase, America ., Marshall Locations: New York, America, Wells Fargo, United States, China, Washington, Beijing

Mr. Stanbro, however, was accused of assault and after he left the hospital was put in solitary confinement. At Clinton Correctional Facility, near the Canadian border, guards kicked and punched a handcuffed man, breaking his rib. In all three cases, the staff members filed false reports to cover up the assaults, court records show, and faced no discipline. The Marshall Project obtained disciplinary data on more than 290 cases in which the corrections department tried to fire guards or supervisors accused of abusing prisoners. In nearly three-quarters of those cases, the agency also accused the officers of covering up misconduct, often by acting in concert.

An officer who broke his baton hitting a prisoner 35 times, even after the man was handcuffed, was not fired. In dozens of documented cases involving severe injuries of prisoners, including three deaths, the agency did not even try to discipline officers, state records show. The records probably reflect only a fraction of the violence guards have inflicted in New York’s corrections system, experts said. These records do not detail prisoner attacks on officers, which the department and the guards’ union said have increased in recent years. A key reason the prison system finds it so hard to get rid of guards is the contract the state signed in 1972 with the union.

☆ Abuses Proliferate in Police Squads Like Memphis's Scorpion Unit
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-28 | by ( Katherine Long | Jack Newsham | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +27 min

Street Crime Unit. Jon Naso/NY Daily News Archive via Getty ImagesMemphis police chief Davis also has prior experience with special street crime units. Street crime squads are popular among politicians who say only aggressive policing will reduce violent crime. In the late 1990s, the Street Crime Unit tripled in size, amid a panic over a rising number of homicides. In a city grappling with violent crime, authorities touted the Street Crime Unit as a bright spot.

☆ Harvard professor says he gets thank-you notes from prisoners secretly using smartphones to take his free computer-science class
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-24 | by ( Britney Nguyen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

An inmate in Georgia told The Marshall Project he uses a contraband phone to teach other prisoners. The Harvard professor told Insider he's received thank-you notes from prisoners who took the class. Malan told Insider over email that he's received thank-you notes from students in prison over the years. In addition to inmates taking online classes like the man in Georgia, some pose as regular students in online classes, something that online learning through Zoom allows. An incarcerated man in California told The Marshall Project that prisoners "have to acquire contraband phones from the people who are supposed to be watching us.

☆ The start of 2023 means carrying a gun without a license is now legal in half of US states: 'Lipstick, an iPhone, maybe a little Smith & Wesson .38'
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-01 | by ( Jason Lalljee | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Alabama's permitless carry law went into effect with the start of the new year. Over the past two decades, gun control laws have weakened at the state and federal levels. The law signaled a gun rights landmark for the US: Now, half of the 50 states allow people to carry handguns without permits. More than 600 mass shootings transpired in the US in 2022, making it the second-highest annual total for mass shootings on record, according to data compiled by the Gun Violence Archive, a non-profit tracking gun violence. There were more mass shootings in the last half decade than in any other five-year period going back to 1966, the Marshall Project found last year.

Timothy York knows what works to treat his decadeslong opioid addiction: Suboxone, a medication that effectively quiets cravings. Since York arrived in federal prison in 2008, he has been held in a series of facilities awash with contraband drugs and violence. Yet the federal prisons are treating only a fraction — less than 10% — of the roughly 15,000 prisoners who need it, according to the bureau’s estimates. Some say the issues stem from a culture at the bureau that is skeptical of addiction medication and pits staff against prisoners. He was using an underground supply of Suboxone at USP-Coleman, the federal prison in Florida where he was incarcerated, but it was erratic.

A female police officer in Chicago says a supervisor forced her to perform oral sex on him inside a car. A female officer in Philadelphia says a sergeant grabbed her hand and placed it on the crotch of his pants. And a female officer in New York says one of her superiors hacked into her Snapchat account and showed off her intimate photos to a male commander. “How can you be in charge of male and female officers with the record that you have?”Marchese didn’t respond to requests for comment. Of the 87 NYPD officers accused in court papers of abusing female officers, 27 have since moved up in rank, according to an NBC News review.

☆ Many security lapses led to escape of Texas inmate accused of killing 5 while on the run, reports find
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-09 | by ( The Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +6 min

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice, or TDCJ, conducted an internal review of the escape and also hired an outside firm to do an independent review. Texas Department of Criminal JusticeAdditionally, two officers had falsified search logs indicating Lopez’s cell had been searched when it had not. Attorneys for the Collins family have notified the Texas agency that they plan to file a lawsuit against it over the deaths. CGL also made several recommendations, including suggesting TDCJ reconfigure transport buses to improve security and develop strategies to reduce its staff vacancies. In the month before Lopez’s escape, 43% of correctional officer jobs at the Hughes Unit were vacant.

☆ New Orleans battled mass incarceration. Then came the backlash over violent crime.
▼ + stars: | 2022-07-06 | by ( Jamiles Lartey | The Marshall Project | Jamiles Lartey Is A New Orleans-Based Staff Writer For The Marshall Project. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +9 min

candidates before him, he appealed to a kind of economy of justice: that spending less time on minor crimes, and on things that shouldn’t be crimes, would give prosecutors more time and resources to tackle violent crime. Reflecting on his first 17 months in office, Williams made sure to mention a slew of recent convictions in nearly the same breath as his efforts toward reform. He recognizes that violent crime is up, and that his office is responsible for addressing it. Williams’ office argued Mitchell had been unfairly denied a chance at parole. The Metropolitan Crime Commission, a nonprofit that publishes weekly city crime data and has been critical of Williams, found that in 2021, 74% of violent felony cases were resolved this way.

☆ COVID allowed Raquel Esquivel and 4,500 others to be released from overcrowded federal prisons. So why is she back behind bars?
▼ + stars: | 2021-08-13 | by ( Jamie Roth | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +27 min

As COVID-19 spread through federal prisons, the Justice Department began a novel experiment: 4,500 prisoners were approved for home confinement with GPS ankle monitors. A federal correctional institution in Englewood, CO. As of May 5, there were 2,066 inmates who’d tested positive for COVID-19 in the federal prison system. "I was just recently released from federal prison," Esquivel wrote him last year on July 3, in their very first text exchange, which the couple shared with Insider. Her defense was enough for Dismas, Esquivel said, and the manager told her they wouldn't recommend any punishment. The next morning at Dismas, Esquivel busied herself as she waited for the bureau's ruling.

☆ These journalists gave Democrats money, federal records say. But the records are wrong.
▼ + stars: | 2020-10-30 | by ( Dave Levinthal | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

Notable journalists from The New York Times, Washington Post, and The Atlantic were surprised to learn from Insider that federal records showed they had made political contributions. Federal records indicate they made political donations. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders to refund his political contributions. Goldberg is one of several prominent journalists who say federal records incorrectly show they've contributed money to politicians. "This must be a case of mistaken identity," said Chang, whose newsroom generally prohibits staff members from making political contributions.

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