CoolerOpposide

Days without a bridge failure:

Temperatures in NYC have reached their highest point so far this year, with Central Park reading 95°F (35°C) yesterday. This will be the 5th straight day with temperatures above 90°F (32.2°C). New York City sees 15 days reach 90°F (32.2°C) per year on average.

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Link to the UNRWA Briefing

I am not trying to assert that Israel killed every single one of these people, but these kinds of forced mass migration/exodus events have historically been one of the main methods employed by genocidal entities in order to slaughter populations en masse. This is so fucking grim.

Reminder: it’s antisemitic to ask what happened to the other 1.33 million Palestinians that were in Rafah.

Anyway, the NYPD paid out $58 million in overtime just to fly helicopters alone last year

Link to the tweet

Link to the article here

“We were elected to implement an aggressive reform program. And that is what we are doing now. We now have three years without further elections ahead of us, our performance will be assessed in 2027.”

It almost sounds like a threat from the conservative Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. His centre-right party Nea Dimokratia With 28.3 percent of the vote, it easily took first place in the European elections, almost twice as many as the left-wing opposition party Syriza (14.9 percent). However, it remained far below the 33 percent target set by Mitsotakis.

The reason given was the currently largest It rises of the Greeks: the high Cost of living,According to the Bank of Greece, 27 percent of the Greek population spends more than 40 percent of their income on housing costs.

Mitsotakis wants to counteract this – and focuses on employer-friendly measureswhich, however, causes the unions and left-wing politicians to cry out.

Employees must be informed 24 hours in advance

From 1 July Employers may invite their employees to Six-day week This will make Greece the first country in the EU to introduce a 41-hour working week. Previously, this was only possible in the tourism and food industries, but now the arrangement of a sixth working day is permitted for all private and publicly controlled industries (but not civil servants). The employee must have at least 24 hours before For the sixth working day, a Surcharge von 40 percent of the daily wage; 115 percent if the day falls on a public holiday.

Overtime is not possible. The day must be entered into a system that is to be controlled by the state.

This is intended to ensure that “industrial companies with rotating shift work and highly specialised staff do not have to interrupt their processes,” quotes the HE DOES the Greek Ministry of Labour. Furthermore, every employee also has the right to eleven consecutive hours off work per day or night and to 24 hours every seven days.

Up to two jobs

But critics stress that workers are already under a lot of pressure: wages are too low, and many Greeks are forced to work two jobs to cover the cost of living – about eight hours a day in one job and up to five hours a day in the other.

Also that the Right of termination to be relaxed, will tighten working conditions: employers are to be first year can dismiss the employee at any time. Mitsotakis wants to encourage companies to hire more people: The Unemployment rate in Greece is twice as high as the Eurozone average (2023: 10.9 percent). Social security contributions employers should be reduced. A reduction in the VATwhich is often seen by left-wing economists as an effective measure to combat inflation, the Prime Minister vehemently rules out.

Protest by trade unions in September of last year when the law passed parliament.

Many working hours, but little productivity:

Economists have long complained about the low labour productivity in Greece – one of the lowest in the EU, while Greek workers already have the longest working hours in Europe compared to the EU. The German Federal Statistical Office According to 2022, an average of 41 hours per week, the European average was 37 hours per week. In Austria The average working hours per week were 35.7. The lowest value was reported for the Netherlands at 31.3 hours per week – due to the high proportion of employed people in part-time employment (43.4 percent).

We need to focus on increasing productivity and automating processes, otherwise the competitiveness of the country is not sustainable. This could also be achieved with a Reduction of working hours cites the HE DOES the head of the German-Greek Chamber of Industry and CommerceAthanassios Kelemis.

Link to the article

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana has become the first state to require that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom under a bill signed into law by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry on Wednesday.

The GOP-drafted legislation mandates that a poster-sized display of the Ten Commandments in “large, easily readable font” be required in all public classrooms, from kindergarten to state-funded universities. Although the bill did not receive final approval from Landry, the time for gubernatorial action — to sign or veto the bill — has lapsed.

Opponents question the law’s constitutionality, warning that lawsuits are likely to follow. Proponents say the purpose of the measure is not solely religious, but that it has historical significance. In the law’s language, the Ten Commandments are described as “foundational documents of our state and national government.”

The displays, which will be paired with a four-paragraph “context statement” describing how the Ten Commandments “were a prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries,” must be in place in classrooms by the start of 2025.

The posters would be paid for through donations. State funds will not be used to implement the mandate, based on language in the legislation.

The law also “authorizes” — but does not require — the display of the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence and the Northwest Ordinance in K-12 public schools.

Similar bills requiring the Ten Commandments be displayed in classrooms have been proposed in other states including Texas, Oklahoma and Utah. However, with threats of legal battles over the constitutionality of such measures, no state besides Louisiana has had success in making the bills law.

Legal battles over the display of the Ten Commandments in classrooms are not new.

In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a similar Kentucky law was unconstitutional and violated the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says Congress can “make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The high court found that the law had no secular purpose but rather served a plainly religious purpose.

Louisiana’s controversial law, in a state ensconced in the Bible Belt, comes during a new era of conservative leadership in the state under Landry, who replaced two-term Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards in January.

The GOP also has a two-thirds supermajority in the Legislature, and Republicans hold every statewide elected position, paving the way for lawmakers to push through a conservative agenda during the legislative session that concluded earlier this month.