Wednesday, July 8, 2020
PHOENIX – A White House panel of parents, teachers and school administrators said Tuesday that reopening schools this fall should be the nation’s top priority, for the wellbeing of students and parents and as a move to “stabilize our society.”
But while the panel pushed for schools reopening “quickly and beautifully in the fall,” as President Donald Trump put it, some teachers and parents in Arizona said they worry that schools here will not be able to find safe ways to do it.
“As a mom and as a teacher, I want my kids to be with their friends. I know that in-person is better for them,” said Dawn Penich-Thacker, communications director for Save Our Schools Arizona.
“But they (Arizona schools) can’t afford to keep my kids safe,” said Penich-Thacker, who worries that Arizona schools do not have the tools to make a safe return. “I see it from the inside that there are not enough resources.”
Gov. Doug Ducey last week ordered the start of in-person classes in Arizona pushed back to Aug. 17, one of several steps he took in the face of spiraling increases in the state’s COVID-19 cases. While the delay gives schools more time to prepare for schooling in the face of the coronavirus, it also means that schoolkids will have spent more than five months away from a classroom.
That’s five months of teachers and students adjusting to online education, five months of school systems scrambling for resources and five months of harried parents juggling jobs, housework and their kids’ educations.
But while the panel pushed for schools reopening “quickly and beautifully in the fall,” as President Donald Trump put it, some teachers and parents in Arizona said they worry that schools here will not be able to find safe ways to do it.
“As a mom and as a teacher, I want my kids to be with their friends. I know that in-person is better for them,” said Dawn Penich-Thacker, communications director for Save Our Schools Arizona.
“But they (Arizona schools) can’t afford to keep my kids safe,” said Penich-Thacker, who worries that Arizona schools do not have the tools to make a safe return. “I see it from the inside that there are not enough resources.”
Gov. Doug Ducey last week ordered the start of in-person classes in Arizona pushed back to Aug. 17, one of several steps he took in the face of spiraling increases in the state’s COVID-19 cases. While the delay gives schools more time to prepare for schooling in the face of the coronavirus, it also means that schoolkids will have spent more than five months away from a classroom.
That’s five months of teachers and students adjusting to online education, five months of school systems scrambling for resources and five months of harried parents juggling jobs, housework and their kids’ educations.
While we were experiencing a COVID-19 Fourth of July, Anna the Grevy's Zebra was experiencing the miracle of life.
The Reid Park Zoo has announced that Anna gave birth to a male foal over the weekend. Anna, and her mate Ben, are first-time parents. They're also an endangered species.
Grevy’s zebras are the largest zebra species. Every zebra has its own unique stripe pattern with no two patterns the same. As part of its survival in the wild, a newborn foal quickly learns to recognize his mother by identifying her distinctive stripe pattern, as well as through sight, sound, and smell. Grevy’s zebras are an endangered species whose population in the wild has dropped significantly over the last 40 years, with fewer than 2,000 Grevy’s zebras remaining in Africa today.
The foal joins Mapenzi the elephant calf and the meerkat pups as one of the newest members of Reid Park Zoo.
This is an exciting time for the zoo, who recently lost both Shombay the lion, and Baheem the Malayan tiger.
While the Zoo remains closed to the public due to COVID-19 precautions, Zoo fans can follow the growth and milestone moments for the zebra foal, meerkat pups, and elephant calf online as Reid Park Zoo “Brings the Zoo to You” with their Virtual Zoo at reidparkzoo.org.
The Reid Park Zoo has announced that Anna gave birth to a male foal over the weekend. Anna, and her mate Ben, are first-time parents. They're also an endangered species.
Grevy’s zebras are the largest zebra species. Every zebra has its own unique stripe pattern with no two patterns the same. As part of its survival in the wild, a newborn foal quickly learns to recognize his mother by identifying her distinctive stripe pattern, as well as through sight, sound, and smell. Grevy’s zebras are an endangered species whose population in the wild has dropped significantly over the last 40 years, with fewer than 2,000 Grevy’s zebras remaining in Africa today.
The foal joins Mapenzi the elephant calf and the meerkat pups as one of the newest members of Reid Park Zoo.
This is an exciting time for the zoo, who recently lost both Shombay the lion, and Baheem the Malayan tiger.
While the Zoo remains closed to the public due to COVID-19 precautions, Zoo fans can follow the growth and milestone moments for the zebra foal, meerkat pups, and elephant calf online as Reid Park Zoo “Brings the Zoo to You” with their Virtual Zoo at reidparkzoo.org.
It's safe to say that appointed U.S. Sen. Martha McSally has some work to do to win over the same female voters that President Donald Trump is driving into Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden's camp.
A few weeks before McSally lost her 2018 Senate bid to Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, an NBC/Marist polls showed women favored Sinema by a 13 percentage point margin. That gap isn't looking any better this year, as McSally—who was appointed the Senate by Gov. Doug Ducey to complete the late John McCain's term after her 2018 loss—faces Democrat Mark Kelly. An early June New York Times/Sienna College poll showed women favored Kelly by a staggering 22 percentage points.
Salon today surfaced a 2007 paper that McSally wrote during her time pursuing a graduate degree in which she suggested that women in the military get pregnant—or, as she put, embrace the "foolishness of a lifetime commitment (motherhood)"—as a way to shirk their military responsibilities.
Arizona Republican senator and former Air Force combat pilot Martha McSally once published an academic paper in which she said military servicewomen should be counseled against the "foolishness of entering into a lifetime commitment (motherhood)" to avoid deployment, and called for the Pentagon to repeal the policy that allows women to use pregnancy as an excuse to "skirt" their commitment.The Salon article further notes:
The article, titled "Women in Combat: Is the Current Policy Obsolete?" appeared in a 2007 edition of the Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy. At the time, McSally, the first female combat pilot in U.S. history — and the first-ever losing Senate candidate to immediately receive a Senate seat — was pursuing a second graduate degree at Air War College.
She later expanded on the article in a lecture at the Duke University School of Law, which hosts a full video on its website.
"I'm very genuinely and sincerely moved. I had no idea our race was on (Legend's) radar, but true reform candidates are obvious to other true reformers," Conover said.
"I'm very genuinely and sincerely moved. I had no idea our race was on (Legend's) radar, but true reform candidates are obvious to other true reformers," Conover said. "I'm so glad he saw the meaning and authenticity behind our campaign."
The EGOT status entertainer said he is "closely following" the several district and county attorney races going on Arizona, Michigan and Florida at the moment because he would like to see a change in the county's criminal justice system, starting on a local level.
Legend observed Conover "will focus prosecution resources on the most serious cases as Pima County District Attorney, while redirecting those in need to the right services rather than jailing them" while noting how many endorsements she's received.
DepositPhotos
Last night the Tucson City Council voted 6-1 to repeal Ordinance 11746, which allowed Tucson police officers to establish restricted areas and administer penalties to individuals for “interfering with police investigations or enforcement activity.”
Adopted on April 21, the ordinance was passed unanimously by the council in response to a video TPD showed them of “First Amendment auditors” screaming profanities at Tucson police officers and filming them at a crime scene.
Based on the vulgarity of the video they were shown, the council quickly adopted the ordinance without much input from the public.
Since then, conversations have popped up on social media about the ordinance, with many claiming that the city council effectively prohibited filming police interactions with the public.
While the ordinance itself does include language intending to protect the right of citizens to film police officers, it still gives officers the ability to bring criminal charges against someone who is trying to film the police, which did not sit well with community members.
Tags: Tucson Police , Tucson City Council , Ordinance 11746 , Filming Police , Image
Congressman Raúl Grijalva:“There’s no sugar-coating it: The response to COVID-19 in Arizona has been a failure on the part of the state and the White House, and nowhere is that more evident than in testing capacity."
In a letter to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Acting Administrator Peter Gaynor, the members of Congress requested a “massive testing blitz” in Arizona.
"Access to testing is dangerously limited and is not even close to meeting demand," the lawmakers wrote. "Arizona is in the bottom third of per capita testing nationally and has the highest positive test rate in the nation at 25 percent- which is three times the national average. Arizonans have reported waiting in line for up to 13 hours for a test and having to wait as long as three weeks to receive the results. There is no way our state will get a handle on the virus with such inadequate testing."
The lawmakers note the outbreak's spread in Arizona is accelerating and putting major pressure on the healthcare system.
"We have seen uncontained community spread and exponential growth of the virus in Arizona," they wrote. "Yesterday, our state passed the grim milestone of 100,000 positive cases. Although it took our state five months to record its first 50,000 cases, it took us approximately two weeks to record an additional 50,000 cases. Alarmingly, we are now leading the nation in new daily cases per capita and not by a close margin. This has put severe pressure on our state’s health care resources. A record number of COVID-19 patients are in the hospital, in the ICU, and on ventilators. In response to only 9 percent ICU capacity remaining and some hospitals reaching 100% capacity, the state has authorized crisis standards of care."
Grijalva said in a prepared statement that the state needs "a robust testing program to identify and then trace the virus in order to keep our communities safe.”
“There’s no sugar-coating it: The response to COVID-19 in Arizona has been a failure on the part of the state and the White House, and nowhere is that more evident than in testing capacity,” Grijalva said.
The total number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Arizona climbed reached 108,000 as of Wednesday, July 8, after the state reported 3,520 new cases this morning, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services.
Pima County had 10,485 of the state's 108,614 confirmed cases.
A total of 1,963 people have died after contracting the virus.
Maricopa County has nearly two-thirds of the state's cases, with the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases hitting 70,128.
Hospitals remain under pressure. The report shows that a record number of 3,421 COVID patients were hospitalized yesterday in the state, more than triple the 1,009 hospitalized on June 1.
A record number of 2,008 people visited ERs with coronavirus symptoms yesterday, while a record number of 871 COVID-19 patients were in ICU beds.
The full text of the letter after the jump.
Will Ferrell used to be such a sure fired guarantee comedy go-to. There was a stretch where it seemed he could do no wrong.
That stretch is long behind him now, and Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, continues his recent streak of lousy-to-mediocre films. This one falls somewhere in the realm of mediocre.
On the eve of the infamous Eurovision contest, the song competition that birthed the career of ABBA, Lars (Ferrell), and Sigrit (Rachel McAdams), lifelong friends and members of the duo rock group Fire Saga, are taking one last bid at fame. They are terrible and are most hated by their Icelandic hometown, including Lars’s father (Pierce Brosnan). A tragic boating accident thrusts them into the competition where they represent their country, and many unfunny musical sequences ensue.
Ferrell’s wigged schtick grows tired early on, and at two-plus hours, we are talking a lot of unwanted shtick. McAdams (who can lip-sync with the best of them) is actually quite good here, nearly saving the film with a warm, funny, earnest performance. Her character’s obsession with magical elves is a potential funny subplot that isn’t adequately explored.
Directed by David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers), this movie would’ve benefited from a much shorter running time. It’s hard watching Ferrell flounder in stuff like this, and his career is in need of some major adjustments. He’s too funny to be goofing around with subpar material.
Streaming now on Netflix.
The total number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Arizona climbed past 108,000 as of Wednesday, July 8, after the state reported 3,520 new cases this morning, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services.
Pima County had 10,485 of the state's 108,614 confirmed cases.
A total of 1,963 people have died after contracting the virus.
Maricopa County has nearly two-thirds of the state's cases, with the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases hitting 70,128.
Hospitals remain under pressure. The report shows that 3,421 COVID patients were hospitalized yesterday in the state, more than triple the 1,009 hospitalized on June 1.
A total of 2,008 people visited ERs yesterday.
A total of 871 COVID-19 patients were in ICU beds yesterday.
With the spread of COVID increasingly out of control in Arizona, some local school districts have announced that they will only offer "distance learning" or online instruction when school starts next month. Unlike in spring, when schools moved online following spring break, districts are planning stricter instructional time designed to mirror traditional in-person classes.
Tucson Unified School District and Sunnyside School District revealed in recent days that they would move to an online-only model, while Catalina Foothills is moving forward with a plan that blends in-person classes and distance learning. Amphi School District announced yesterday that it would start online-only instruction on Aug. 10 and could return to the traditional classroom as soon as Aug. 17, but students will be able to continue with online classes if they choose to do so.
Marana School District had not yet updated its plans as of Tuesday, July 7.
TUSD will launch online classes for all students starting Aug. 10, with in-person classroom instruction delayed until "when it is deemed safe," according to a letter to parents from TUSD Superintendent Gabrielle Trujillo.
Pima County had 10,485 of the state's 108,614 confirmed cases.
A total of 1,963 people have died after contracting the virus.
Maricopa County has nearly two-thirds of the state's cases, with the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases hitting 70,128.
Hospitals remain under pressure. The report shows that 3,421 COVID patients were hospitalized yesterday in the state, more than triple the 1,009 hospitalized on June 1.
A total of 2,008 people visited ERs yesterday.
A total of 871 COVID-19 patients were in ICU beds yesterday.
With the spread of COVID increasingly out of control in Arizona, some local school districts have announced that they will only offer "distance learning" or online instruction when school starts next month. Unlike in spring, when schools moved online following spring break, districts are planning stricter instructional time designed to mirror traditional in-person classes.
Tucson Unified School District and Sunnyside School District revealed in recent days that they would move to an online-only model, while Catalina Foothills is moving forward with a plan that blends in-person classes and distance learning. Amphi School District announced yesterday that it would start online-only instruction on Aug. 10 and could return to the traditional classroom as soon as Aug. 17, but students will be able to continue with online classes if they choose to do so.
Marana School District had not yet updated its plans as of Tuesday, July 7.
TUSD will launch online classes for all students starting Aug. 10, with in-person classroom instruction delayed until "when it is deemed safe," according to a letter to parents from TUSD Superintendent Gabrielle Trujillo.
Protect Our Care, a nonprofit healthcare advocacy group, is launching a $2 million TV buy in three states, including Arizona, to hammer President Donald Trump for his response to the coronavirus crisis.
In one spot, "Left Behind," a family nurse practitioner, Tarik Khan, talks about how Trump failed to protect vulnerable older adults from the virus. In another, "Ignored," Dr. Risha Khetarpal says the president is ignoring experts and spreading false information, leading to unnecessary deaths.
The ad buy comes as Arizona continues to move into swing-state territory, with polls showing Trump trailing Democrat Joe Biden.
Tuesday, July 7, 2020
ICYMI, here are the stories we covered for you today.
- The total number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Arizona climbed reached 105,000 as of Tuesday, July 7, after the state reported 3,653 new cases this morning, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services.
- Hamilton is the gem it was rumored to be.
- Although the downtown theatre hasn’t hosted a live performance in months, the Fox Board of Directors has officially decided to suspend programming through December 2020 due to the continued impacts of COVID-19.
- Today Pima County government announced they contracted Maximus Health & Services, Inc. to boost contact tracing efforts in the region.
- Phoenix police released partial video Monday of the fatal shooting by officers this weekend of a man in Maryvale, but that did little to satisfy activists who are pressing for more footage to be released to the public.
- As the number of Arizonans who have contracted COVID-19 has raced past 100,000, testing for the novel coronavirus that causes the respiratory disease has become a priority.
- In late June, after three months of near silence on the topic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finally weighed in on a question of critical importance to millions of American women and families: How dangerous is the coronavirus for pregnant women and new mothers?
- After a prolonged government shutdown cut into their revenues in 2019, business owners around the Grand Canyon National Park said 2020 appeared to be on track to being a bounceback year for them.
- With COVID-19 cases spreading wildly in the community, the Amphitheater School District is joining TUSD and Sunnyside School District in launching online-only classes to start the school year.
- Businesses tied to President Donald Trump’s family and associates stand to receive as much as $21 million in government loans designed to shore up payroll expenses for companies struggling amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to federal data released Monday.
- The news that gyms would be shut down as part of Gov. Doug Ducey’s latest executive order to slow the spread of COVID-19 has blindsided those who work in the fitness industry.
- A new study led by University of Arizona researchers examines a variety of “nontraditional mask materials” and their ability to protect wearers.
