Stuff YOU Should Know
Migrant Caravan Moves Toward U.S.
You may have already heard about the so-called “migrant caravan” that is making its way through Central America toward the southern United States. Donald Trump has already announced plans to deploy up to 15,000 U.S. troops to the southern border. But is the caravan really as great a threat as the president is making it out to be?
The caravan began on October 12 in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Originally, it consisted of several hundred people. But as it proceeded north, it grew to include an estimated 7,000 people. As it moves through Mexico, however, it is starting to lose strength, as people battle harsh weather conditions, hunger, thirst, and disease. Also, roughly 1,500 people have decided to stay behind and seek asylum in Mexico instead of continuing on. In fact, estimates of the caravan’s size have dropped as low as 3,500 last week, and the number is expected to continue to fall over the many weeks it will take the caravan to reach the U.S. border. Those who press on and complete the journey plan to apply for U.S. asylum at the border. If their applications are rejected, they will be sent back to their country of origin, regardless of poverty or safety threats they may face there. As a result, some may attempt to cross the border illegally.
Despite Trump’s response, and the White House’s implications that the migrants are dangerous or even possible terrorists, UNICEF reports that an estimated 2,300 of the remaining caravan members are children. Many of the others are elderly or ravaged by poverty and/or violence in their countries of origin. Along the way, the migrants have received aid from private citizens and from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as the Red Cross. Many U.S. doctors are also volunteering their services to help travelers suffering from illness, exhaustion, or malnutrition.
Under U.S. and international law, every person has the right to apply for asylum in another country. That means that, whether the president sends troops to the border or not, all of the caravan members must be given the opportunity to go through the legal process to determine whether or not they will be allowed to remain in the United States permanently.
Dig Deeper Print out a map of Central America. Using internet resources, trace the route of the migrant caravan so far.
Google Employees Walk Out
Imagine that a male employee at the company you work for is accused of sexual harassment. The company finds reasonable cause to believe the claim. It fires the male employee–but doesn’t disclose the offense, and then sends him off with a very generous exit package. Is that fair?
Employees at Google say no. In fact, last week, thousands of Google employees in offices all over the world staged a huge walkout protesting the company’s response to sexual harassment cases. Not only did Google pay out millions of dollars in exit packages to accused offenders, but they also did what they could to cover up the accusations. Google has fired 48 employees for sexual harassment in the past year alone. Nevertheless, the protestors are demanding that the company overhaul the way it treats these cases in the future. The critics want Google to end the practice of private arbitration (deal-making behind closed doors between the accuser and the accused), and to publish transparency reports which include information on sexual harassment cases, as well as salaries and other benefits. These workers also want to put an employee representative on the company board, and to build a more accepting, safe, and inclusive workplace for the future by creating a chief diversity officer position. This person would have the ability to speak directly to the board, to hopefully make harassment cases less prevalent in the future.
What Do You Think? An inclusive workplace is one of the key things that young people look for when considering where to apply for a job. Knowing what you do about Google’s workplace environment, would you consider applying for a job there someday? Why or why not?
Plane Crash Mystery Continues
Two Mondays ago, Lion Air Flight 610, en route from Jakarta to Pangleal Pinang, crashed into the Java Sea, killing all 189 passengers on board. On Thursday, Indonesian Navy divers recovered the jet’s black box, which will hopefully shed some light on what caused the plane to go down.
Airplane Instruments primary flight display
Credit: Oliver Tindall/Shutterstock
The box was found covered in mud and had to be dug up from the bottom of the sea. From there it was transported to Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. Experts hope to use it to help them learn what caused the three-month-old plane to crash on a mild day with no weather-related issues. Every plane actually has two black boxes: one for recording conversations in the cockpit, the other for tracking critical data such as fuel and altitude. It has not yet been revealed which of flight 610’s two black boxes has been recovered. In the meantime, Indonesia’s Transportation Ministry has instructed Lion Air to suspend its technical director and the ground crew that serviced the plane before it took off, while they try to get to the bottom of what happened. It is suspected that inaccurate airspeed readings might have had something to do with the crash, because the plane had been experiencing problems with that the day before. But the recovery of the black box should help to definitively solve the mystery.
Lion Air, a low-cost flight carrier in Indonesia, began operating in 2000 and has had at least fifteen major problems since then. But people still rely on it because of its low cost. Also, because Indonesia is a country of small islands, people are dependent on planes to move between them. Both the United States and the European Union have banned Indonesian carriers in the past due to their poor safety record, but these bans have since been lifted.
Dig Deeper Use Internet resources to create an annotated timeline of the fifteen safety episodes that Lion Air has experienced since it began operations in 2000.
Cell Phone Myth Debunked?
If you’re like most Americans, you probably have your phone on you 24/7. But do you ever worry about the health risks involved with this kind of behavior? Scientists have been working to answer this question for decades. The resulting study cost $30 million and has brought to light some interesting results.
Scientists studied three thousand rodents and found that, yes, there is a link between radio wave exposure and cancer in male lab rats. But that link is only mild and involves a much greater amount of radio wave exposure than someone would experience with just routine cell phone use. Also, the radio frequency studied was used only by early cell phone technology, and not present-day phones. So the study results would apply mostly to early adopters, not to today’s users.
Does this mean that we can all stop worrying about cell phones causing cancer? Not exactly. Even though the connection between the radio waves and cancer is weak, it exists nonetheless. And in a country where virtually everyone is walking around attached to their phones, the wider health implications remain to be seen.