濮阳东方医院男科治疗阳痿非常便宜濮阳东方医院男科看阳痿可靠,濮阳东方妇科口碑好不好,濮阳东方医院治早泄很正规,濮阳东方医院男科看阳痿评价好收费低,濮阳东方男科医院割包皮很便宜,濮阳东方妇科医院看病专业,濮阳东方看妇科病非常可靠

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California's effort to write the nation's first ethnic studies curriculum for public schools has united liberals and conservatives: They think it's terrible.Jewish lawmakers complained that the proposed lessons are anti-Semitic, while a conservative critic says capitalism is presented as a "form of power and oppression." The clash comes as a law requires the state to adopt ethnic studies, which view history through the lens of diverse cultures.State Superintendent Tony Thurmond said Wednesday that he will recommend changes to better reflect the contributions of Jewish Americans and remove sections that the California Legislative Jewish Caucus finds objectionable."We really need some significant changes, if not to go back to square one," said Democratic state Sen. Ben Allen of Santa Monica, the caucus chairman. "Our concern is that the draft curriculum, as currently written, would literally institutionalize the teaching of anti-Semitic stereotypes in our public schools."For instance, the proposed curriculum has lessons on identifying Islamophobia and other forms of discrimination but does not include ways to identify anti-Semitism. Song lyrics included in the draft also seem to support the stereotype that Jews control the news media, the caucus said."It would be a cruel irony if a curriculum meant to help alleviate prejudice and bigotry were to instead marginalize Jewish students and fuel hatred and discrimination against the Jewish community," the 14 caucus members said in a recent letter.Jewish lawmakers said that's a particular danger following a rise in hate crimes against California Jews last year and recent attacks on synagogues, including one in April. A 19-year-old gunman told investigators he was motivated by Jewish hatred when he killed a woman and wounded two other people, including a rabbi, at the Chabad of Poway synagogue near San Diego."Children are not born as bigots, and so it's critically important that we get this curriculum right," said Democratic Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson of Santa Barbara.State Superintendent Tony Thurmond said the omission of Jewish contributions was not intentional but that ethnic studies traditionally have focused on African Americans, Latinos, Asian and Pacific Islanders and indigenous people.He and Jewish lawmakers said there have been other requests to include Hindus and a section on the Armenian genocide. Allen suggested that white Europeans might learn empathy for immigrants today if there were a section on the discrimination that Italian and Irish nationals once faced in the U.S."There's no limit on groups who have experienced oppression," Thurmond said.In 2016, then-Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, signed a law requiring the state to adopt an ethnic studies curriculum by March 31, 2020. Thurmond said he is likely to ask lawmakers to extend the deadline.Earlier this year, state officials completed a draft of the curriculum written by a panel of mostly classroom teachers.The proposed curriculum went to a Board of Education advisory commission in May, and it's seeking public comments through Thursday. Commission members will consider the comments and changes at public hearings in Sacramento next month.Board leaders said in statement that the curriculum "should be accurate (and) free of bias," acknowledging that "the current draft model curriculum falls short and needs to be substantially redesigned."The law doesn't require schools to adopt the final version, but legislation approved by the state Assembly and awaiting a vote in the Senate would make the course a requirement to graduate from high school.Aside from the Jewish lawmakers' concerns, conservative researcher Williamson Evers said California wants to teach kids that capitalism is racist.Evers, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and a former assistant education secretary under former President George W. Bush, said in a Wall Street Journal opinion column that the draft includes capitalism as a "form of power and oppression" in an apparently "left wing" approach to the classroom.Thurmond said he wasn't offering changes to address that criticism. Democratic Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel of Encino, vice chairman of the Jewish caucus, said that too needs to be fixed because it reflects a "fundamentally flawed curriculum" that "feels a lot more like indoctrination.""We know that it's very personal. History is very personal, ethnic studies is very personal, so we know and understand that this is difficult," said Stephanie Gregson, director of the curriculum division at the state education department.Gregson called Evers' criticisms a mischaracterization that's taken "out of context."But she said the department is planning changes after recognizing that the draft curriculum does not meet state guidelines of inclusivity and "creating space for all students, regardless of race, ethnicity, class or gender." 4939

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — As the political battle to overturn California's gas tax increase intensified, the state transportation agency coordinated frequently with the public affairs firm working to block the repeal on behalf of unions, construction companies and local government groups, emails obtained by The Associated Press show.The California State Transportation Agency and Sacramento-based Bicker, Castillo & Fairbanks organized news conferences and other efforts to promote legislation to raise the tax to fund road and bridge repairs, which passed the Legislature in April 2017. After Gov. Jerry Brown signed it, the agency and firm continued planning events and coordinating social media posts as opponents gathered signatures for repeal.Three ethics experts interviewed by the AP said the emails raise concerns that the agency's relationship with the firm was too close, but none saw a clear violation of campaign laws, which prohibit the use of public resources for political campaigns.REPORT: Gas tax funds reportedly being used to campaign against Prop 6The repeal qualified for the November ballot in June. The firm, BCF, continues to work for the anti-repeal coalition, which includes the League of California Cities and the California Chamber of Commerce.Some communications between BCF and the state agency involved politics, according to more than 200 emails from 2017 and the first half of this year obtained by the AP through the California Public Records Act.Last fall, the agency and firm discussed opinion pieces "targeting" U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa and three other vulnerable Republicans in Congress. National Democratic leaders see those seats as key to winning control of the U.S. House.RELATED: Caltrans' gas tax freeway signs raise concerns with FedsIn January, a BCF partner, Kathy Fairbanks, communicated with the agency about designing a campaign logo for Proposition 69, a June ballot measure involving how gas tax proceeds are spent. And an undated memo shows the agency and firm also planned to coordinate efforts for several months through the primary.Loyola Law School Professor and government ethics expert Jessica Levinson said the relationship between the firm and agency appears too close, and the exchange about the congressmen crossed an ethical line.RELATED: California campaign watchdog investigates gas tax campaign"I mean way over the line," she said.BCF and agency officials said the communications were appropriate to educate the public about the law and that they ramped down coordination when the firm took an official campaign role."Clearly the agency was trying to coordinate with the campaign, and they shouldn't have," said Bob Stern, a government ethics expert who helped write California's campaign laws. But he added the actual amount of time government workers spent coordinating with the firm was likely minimal.Ann Ravel, who served on the Federal Election Commission and California's Fair Political Practices Commission, said the volume of emails raises questions about whether the agency aided one side.RELATED: Poll: Support strong for Proposition 6, which repeals California's gas tax"It seems like maybe it's a little too cozy, but I wouldn't say that it's clearly inappropriate," Ravel said.The legislation approved last year raised gas taxes by 12 cents per gallon and added diesel and vehicle fees to generate billion annually. Proposition 6 would repeal the increase and require voters approve gas and vehicle tax increases.The ballot measure is a centerpiece of California Republicans' efforts to boost turnout. GOP Congress members — including House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield and Orange County's Mimi Walters — are among the repeal's biggest financial backers.Leaders of the repeal campaign have asked the federal government to investigate their claims that public resources have been used against them, based on emails and other documents that show local government workers discussing the repeal effort. Those documents are different from the ones the AP obtained. Opponents also circulated a video of a Caltrans contractor passing out anti-Proposition 6 fliers to drivers.The California Department of Transportation, known as Caltrans, falls under the state transportation agency.Melissa Figueroa, the agency's deputy secretary for communications and strategic planning, said it's the agency's job to inform the public about the impact of laws, and it has done so in the past, including for California's "motor voter" registration law."We're trying to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars," Figueroa said.The agency communicated much less frequently with the firm and stopped coordinating social media posts once the official anti-Proposition 6 campaign started, Figueroa said."Prior to that point, it was more of a collaborative effort because they were not in campaign mode," Figueroa said.BCF partner Brandon Castillo said the coalition registered as a fundraising committee in December and officially became a ballot measure campaign in March to support Proposition 69.BCF and other gas tax supporters routinely asked the agency for information, but they did not coordinate on creating campaign materials, Figueroa said. The agency also fulfilled numerous public records requests filed by gas tax opponents, she said.However, an undated memo outlining agency and coalition plans from March through the primary election shows the firm and the agency coordinated the timing of announcements and events. It details plans for the state to tout new construction projects while the coalition campaigned for Proposition 69.The agency and coalition coordinated their schedules, but the agency wasn't involved in campaigning for Proposition 69, Figueroa said.Castillo sent the email about op-eds focused on GOP candidates Sept. 20, 2017."Hey Melissa — We're penning opeds (sic) targeting the following congressional republicans," he wrote. He identified Reps. Jeff Denham, Steve Knight, Walters and Issa and asked Figueroa for information about projects funded by the gas tax increase in their districts.At the time, the coalition was working to persuade California's influential Republican congressional delegates to reject the repeal.Several days after Castillo's email, Figueroa suggested she or Brian Kelly, then the agency's leader, help find an author for the piece targeting Issa, considered the most vulnerable California incumbent before he decided against seeking re-election.Castillo responded saying coalition members were working on it and asked: "Do you have anyone in mind that could influence Republicans/Issa?"The documents obtained by the AP don't include further exchanges on the issue. In interviews, Castillo and Figueroa said the agency never suggested an author. Figueroa said she offered help because the op-ed would educate people in Issa's district.The piece ultimately was written by the mayor of Encinitas, a suburb north of San Diego, and ran the following month in the San Diego Union-Tribune. It touted projects in the district funded by the gas tax increase but didn't mention Issa.Levinson found the exchange surprising because it seemed to directly reference campaign activities."I don't want to say it's a smoking gun, but that is so much more explicit than I ever would have predicted they would be," she said.Prominent gas tax repeal supporters, including gubernatorial candidate John Cox and conservative activist Carl DeMaio, criticized the agency's activity."It's against the law, and it also shows that you can't trust them with money," DeMaio said. "I think that what you're seeing is just the tip of the iceberg." 7732

RTW Retailwinds, the parent company of retail chain New York & Co., announced Monday that is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy — the latest blow to an industry whose struggles were taken to new heights by the coronavirus pandemic.The company said in a press release Monday that filed for bankruptcy relief in New Jersey. In the statement, the company hinted that all of its more than 400 brick-and-mortar stores could close for good.In recent months, sales have fallen at New York & Co. as the pandemic forced shutdowns at non-essential retail stores across the country. In addition, massive layoffs and a large increase in employees working from home shrunk demand for professional attire. Other purveyors of businesswear have also fallen on hard times — Brooks Brothers filed for bankruptcy last week.CNN reports that New York & Co. furloughed a "significant portion" of store employees in March and that last week, the company was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.New York and Co. joins an exponentially growing list of retailers who have filed for bankruptcy in recent weeks, including Sur La Table, JC Penney, Pier 1 Imports J. Crew and Niemen Marcus. 1184

Right now, dozens of train cars carrying 10 million pounds of poop are stranded in a rural Alabama rail yard. Technically it's biowaste, but to the 982 residents in the small town of Parrish, that's just semantics.They want it gone. The load has been there for almost two months, and it's making the whole place smell like a rotting animal carcass.To add insult to injury, it isn't even their poop. For the last year, waste management facilities in New York and one in New Jersey have been shipping tons of biowaste -- literally, tons -- to Big Sky Environmental, a private landfill in Adamsville, Alabama. But in January, the neighboring town of West Jefferson filed an injunction against Big Sky to keep the sludge from being stored in a nearby rail yard.It was successful -- but as a result, the poo already in transit got moved to Parrish,?where there are no zoning laws to prevent the waste from being stored. 937

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — By the time drug enforcement agents swooped into his small medical office in Martinsville, Virginia, in 2017, Dr. Joel Smithers had prescribed about a half a million doses of highly addictive opioids in two years.Patients from five states drove hundreds of miles to see him, spending up to 16 hours on the road to get prescriptions for oxycodone and other powerful painkillers."He's done great damage and contributed ... to the overall problem in the heartland of the opioid crisis," said Christopher Dziedzic, a supervisory special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration who oversaw the investigation into Smithers.In the past two decades, opioids have killed about 400,000 Americans, ripped families apart and left communities — many in Appalachia — grappling with ballooning costs of social services like law enforcement, foster care and drug rehab.Smithers, a 36-year-old married father of five, is facing the possibility of life in prison after being convicted in May of more than 800 counts of illegally prescribing drugs, including the oxycodone and oxymorphone that caused the death of a West Virginia woman. When he is sentenced Wednesday, the best Smithers can hope for is a mandatory minimum of 20 years.Authorities say that, instead of running a legitimate medical practice, Smithers headed an interstate drug distribution ring that contributed to the opioid abuse epidemic in West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and Virginia.In court filings and at trial, they described an office that lacked basic medical supplies, a receptionist who lived out of a back room during the work week, and patients who slept outside and urinated in the parking lot.At trial, one woman who described herself as an addict compared Smithers' practice to pill mills she frequented in Florida."I went and got medication without — I mean, without any kind of physical exam or bringing medical records, anything like that," the woman testified.A receptionist testified that patients would wait up to 12 hours to see Smithers, who sometimes kept his office open past midnight. Smithers did not accept insurance and took in close to 0,000 in cash and credit card payments over two years."People only went there for one reason, and that was just to get pain medication that they (could) abuse themselves or sell it for profit," Dziedzic said.The opioid crisis has been decades in the making and has been fueled by a mix of prescription and street drugs.From 2000 to 2010, annual deaths linked to prescription opioids increased nearly fourfold. By the 2010s, with more crackdowns on pill mills and more restrictive guidelines on prescriptions, the number of prescriptions declined. Then people with addictions turned to even deadlier opioids. But the number of deaths tied to prescription opioids didn't begin to decline until last year, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Martinsville, where Smithers set up shop, has been particularly hard hit.A city of about 14,000 near Virginia's southern border, Martinsville once was a thriving furniture and textile manufacturing center that billed itself as the "Sweatshirt Capital of the World." But when factories began closing in the 1990s, thousands of jobs were lost. Between 2006 and 2012, the city had the nation's third-highest number of opioid pills received per capita, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal data.Andrew Kolodny, a Brandeis University doctor who has long been critical of opioids, said that in recent years, doctors became less comfortable writing lots of opioid prescriptions and many big prescribers retired. That opened an opportunity for others."If you're one of the guys still doing this," he said, "you're going to have tons of patients knocking down your door."During his trial, Smithers testified that after he moved to Virginia, he found himself flooded with patients from other states who said many nearby pain clinics had been shut down. Smithers said he reluctantly began treating these patients, with the goal of weaning them off high doses of immediate-release drugs.He acknowledged during testimony that he sometimes wrote and mailed prescriptions for patients he had not examined but insisted that he had spoken to them over the phone.Once, he met a woman in the parking lot of a Starbucks, she handed him 0 and he gave her a prescription for fentanyl, an opioid pain reliever that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine.When area pharmacists started refusing to fill prescriptions written by Smithers, he directed patients to far-flung pharmacies, including two in West Virginia. Prosecutors say Smithers also used some patients to distribute drugs to other patients. Four people were indicted in Kentucky on conspiracy charges.At his trial, Smithers portrayed himself as a caring doctor who was deceived by some patients."I learned several lessons the hard way about trusting people that I should not have trusted," he said.Smithers' lawyer told the judge he had been diagnosed with depression and anxiety. Family members said through a spokesperson that they believe his decisions were influenced by personal stress, and emotional and mental strain.Even before he opened his Martinsville practice in August 2015, Smithers had raised suspicions. West Virginia authorities approached him in June 2015 about a complaint with his practice there, but when they returned the next day with a subpoena, they found his office cleaned out and a dumpster filled with shredded papers and untested urine samples.Some of Smithers' patients have remained fiercely loyal to him, insisting their severe chronic pain was eased by the powerful painkillers he prescribed.Lennie Hartshorn Jr., the father of the West Virginia woman who died two days after taking drugs Smithers prescribed, testified for the defense.Hartshorn said his daughter, Heather Hartshorn, told someone "she would rather be dead than in pain all the time." According to a form Heather Hartshorn filled out when she went to see Smithers, she had chronic pain in her lower back, legs, hips and neck from a severe car accident and a fall.When asked by Smithers' lawyer if he blames Smithers for anything, Lennie Hartshorn said he does not.Smithers has been denied bond while he awaits sentencing. His attorney did not respond to inquiries from AP. Smithers has said he plans to appeal.____Associated Press reporters Geoff Mulvihill and Riin Aljas contributed to this story. 6501