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Today’s high tales

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey yesterday signed a invoice into regulation prohibiting diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at public colleges, universities and state businesses. Republicans say the regulation goals to guard college students from indoctrination within the classroom. Democrats have criticized the regulation for its unclear language, together with its ban on packages that train “divisive concepts” surrounding race, gender and id.

Alabama lawmakers authorized a invoice barring public faculties and different entities from utilizing cash to assist range, fairness and inclusion packages.

Google Maps/Screenshot by NPR

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Google Maps/Screenshot by NPR

Alabama lawmakers authorized a invoice barring public faculties and different entities from utilizing cash to assist range, fairness and inclusion packages.

Google Maps/Screenshot by NPR

• On Up First, NPR community reporter Kelsey Shelton of WBHM speaks with college students about how the regulation would have an effect on them. University of Alabama at Birmingham sophomore Miguel Luna says he is concerned about losing access to issues that make college pleasing. He participates in a Latino networking group and worries his adviser will lose her job. Still, he says the regulation has solely made student-led range efforts stronger and urged folks to “start voting and paying attention to state politics.” 

The Environmental Protection Agency has finalized strict new guidelines to restrict automobile tailpipe emissions, which is able to push the auto business to speed up its transition to electrical automobiles. The rule sets emissions standards throughout a whole fleet, that means producers could make fuel automobiles in the event that they make sufficient low or zero-emission vehicles to common out emissions. The rules are essential to President Biden’s struggle in opposition to local weather change.

• The EPA needed to dial down the timeline for its new rule after automakers and auto employee unions lobbied for extra time to develop provide chains and alter infrastructure. Still, NPR’s Camila Domonoske says these are still “historic standards.” She reviews that the Biden administration “bent over backwards” for the automobile business’s assist, making the brand new rule extra sturdy and more durable to overturn by future administrations. 

The “front page of the internet” is able to go public. Reddit debuts on the New York Stock Exchange at the moment. Its founders hope to make the location extra worthwhile. But lots of its energy customers aren’t thrilled, and a few wish to wager in opposition to it.

• NPR’s Bobby Allyn says the core pressure behind the battle is between Redditors and the corporate’s company shift. Despite its 73 million customers, Reddit has never been able to turn a profit. Scandals over poisonous content material and its less-than-stellar popularity for civil discourse made it arduous to draw advertisers, although Allyn says the location has turn into extra “tame and rule-bound” not too long ago. CEO Steve Huffman desires the corporate to mature, however customers need it to remain a “fun, childish playground.”

From our hosts

This essay was written by Michel Martin. She hosts Morning Edition and Up First.

For sale masks are seen displayed on a clothesline within the entrance yard of a home in Los Angeles on July 20, 2020.

Chris Delmas/AFP by way of Getty Images

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Chris Delmas/AFP by way of Getty Images

For sale masks are seen displayed on a clothesline within the entrance yard of a home in Los Angeles on July 20, 2020.

Chris Delmas/AFP by way of Getty Images

Many newsrooms — together with all these I’ve been in — hold a working listing of necessary anniversaries their reporters would possibly wish to cowl: the day of the primary Moon touchdown, the day Uncle Tom’s Cabin was first revealed — issues like that. If you hearken to Morning Edition (I do know you do!) then you already know that we frequently point out historic occasions or one other initially of every hour.

Some of those anniversaries are issues we might desire to not bear in mind, however we decide them anyway as a result of we all know we have to, on some stage. Maybe there’s unfinished enterprise related to them; typically, it is simply too necessary to disregard—nevertheless a lot we could wish to.

The Associated Press roundup I checked out yesterday jogged my memory that on March 20, 4 years in the past, the Governor of Illinois informed residents to remain dwelling apart from necessities like meals and medication. California and New York had already carried out this in a transfer to cease the unfold of the coronavirus.

Nobody knew how lengthy it will final; most individuals thought, possibly naively, it will solely be for a few weeks. Stocks tumbled on Wall Street, ending their worst week because the 2008 monetary disaster.

That was the least of it, for many individuals anyway. People began getting sick, some folks began to die. People misplaced jobs. Schools shut down. Lines at meals banks obtained lengthy. Kids and fogeys went stir-crazy.

Some good issues occurred. Some folks obtained to rediscover uncared for hobbies like baking or stitching. Some obtained to spend high quality time with family members they’d not in any other case have had. But for many individuals, it was a tragic, lonely, even terrifying time — and to be trustworthy—do we actually wish to return there?

Dr. Cornelia Griggs and Eric Klinenberg are two individuals who assume we do want to return there — to know what occurred to us and to consider what we should always do in another way. They each have written accounts of the worst months of the pandemic: Dr. Griggs from her vantage level inside a busy hospital, Klinenberg by interviewing New Yorkers across the metropolis and including analysis about how different nations handled the disaster. Both books are harrowing and uplifting —and to me, exhausting. I needed to take breaks whereas studying. I didn’t wish to take into consideration all that once more. I did not wish to go there, however now I’m glad I did.

Picture present

Azzam, 12, misplaced his leg when a bomb hit the constructing the place he was sheltering along with his household in Syria. They now stay in a rural space exterior of Damascus, the place he finds happiness and peace in caring for the livestock after college. The picture is from Feb. 21, 2022.

Hasan Belal for NPR

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Hasan Belal for NPR

Azzam, 12, misplaced his leg when a bomb hit the constructing the place he was sheltering along with his household in Syria. They now stay in a rural space exterior of Damascus, the place he finds happiness and peace in caring for the livestock after college. The picture is from Feb. 21, 2022.

Hasan Belal for NPR

NPR requested photojournalists from Everyday Projects — a world neighborhood of photographers utilizing photos to problem dangerous stereotypes — to ship their photographs of sudden moments of pleasure, regardless of how small. They shared photographs of all the pieces from former baby troopers taking part in soccer to an older couple’s second of togetherness.

See all of the photographs we featured for the International Day of Happiness here.

3 issues to know earlier than you go

The UConn Huskies are the No. 1 seed and are favored to win this 12 months’s NCAA March Madness match. But is Jonathan the Husky the cutest mascot within the competitors?

Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images

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Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images

The UConn Huskies are the No. 1 seed and are favored to win this 12 months’s NCAA March Madness match. But is Jonathan the Husky the cutest mascot within the competitors?

Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images

1. Today is the deadline for filling out your males’s NCAA March Madness match bracket. Try one among these 5 foolish methods of choosing winners that don’t require any basketball knowledge. 
2. The Los Angeles Dodgers have fired Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, over allegations that he stole the baseball player’s money to cowl unlawful playing bets.
3. Media titan Rupert Murdoch has been accused of personally realizing concerning the telephone hacking and unlawful acts of his British tabloids. Will Lewis, writer and CEO of the Washington Post, has been accused of plotting to cover up senior executives’ roles within the scandal when he was working for Murdoch. 

This e-newsletter was edited by Majd Al-Waheidi. Mansee Khurana contributed.