The Full Belmonte, 1/28/2023
Tyre Nichols Cried in Anguish. Memphis Officers Kept Hitting.
“MEMPHIS — The police officers kicked Tyre Nichols in the head, pepper-sprayed him and hit him repeatedly with a baton, even as he showed no signs of fighting back. At one point, after Mr. Nichols stood up, one officer struck him with at least five forceful blows while another held Mr. Nichols’s hands behind his back.
Soon, Mr. Nichols, 29, was on the ground — not far from the home he shared with his mother and stepfather — crying out in anguish: ‘Mom, Mom, Mom.’
Officials in Memphis released roughly an hour of video on Friday that captured how a traffic stop involving Mr. Nichols on Jan. 7 turned deadly during a second encounter after he fled on foot. The video, which was posted online in four segments just before 6 p.m., provided a degree of long-awaited clarity for the many people in Memphis and around the country who have demanded to know what happened. Yet it also failed to answer essential questions, including why the police pulled over Mr. Nichols, who was Black, to begin with.
The video was shared a day after five officers, all of them also Black, were charged with second-degree murder in connection with Mr. Nichols’s death. Soon after he died in a hospital three days after the beating, city officials promised to share the footage with the public as a measure of transparency in a case that has unsettled and angered much of the community and the nation.
In a clear signal of trepidation over how the city would react, the video’s release was preceded by pleas from elected officials, civic leaders and Mr. Nichols’s family to not let outrage grow into destructive unrest. Protesters gathered in Memphis on Friday night, spilling onto a main interstate highway and blocking a bridge, but the concerns about violent confrontations were not yet realized.
Memphis had been bracing. Law enforcement officers from across Tennessee were standing by, the city’s public schools canceled after-school activities on Friday, and some businesses boarded up windows and cautioned their employees about potential disruptions downtown. Many in the city had also been girding themselves for viewing scenes they knew would be upsetting.
‘Tonight will be one of the toughest nights that we will ever experience in the city,’ Van Turner Jr., the president of the Memphis branch of the N.A.A.C.P., said in a news conference on Friday morning, noting the sorrow that had already been coursing through Memphis in recent days.
The video reverberated beyond the city, as the case has tapped into an enduring frustration over Black men having fatal encounters with police officers. There were small protests in Washington, D.C., New York City and Sacramento, where Mr. Nichols had lived before Memphis. President Biden said in a statement that the video had left him ‘outraged and deeply pained.’…” Read more at New York Times
Video footage of violent home attack on Paul Pelosi released
“SAN FRANCISCO — Footage of the attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was released to the public Friday.
Footage shows a man identified by authorities as suspect David DePape breaking into the home. Body camera footage from police responding to the location shows a confrontation between the attacker and Pelosi.
That footage shows DePape rip a hammer from the grasp of 82-year-old Paul Pelosi and lunge toward him. The attacker then holds the tool over his head. A blow to Pelosi occurs out of view and the officers rush into the house and jump on DePape.
Pelosi, apparently unconscious, can be seen lying face down on the floor in his pajama top and underwear.
Background: The footage released Friday from the court clerk's office was played in open court last month. It showed footage from Capitol police surveillance cameras, body cameras worn by the two responding police officers and from the police interview of accused attacker David DePape. Parts of Paul Pelosi's 911 call were also played.
For context: DePape, 42, is accused of breaking into the couple's home Oct. 28 with a political vendetta and assaulting Paul Pelosi with a hammer. DePape pleaded not guilty in December to six charges, including attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, attempted kidnapping, burglary, elder abuse and threatening a family member of a public official.
Why the video was released: A San Francisco judge ruled Wednesday that there was no reason to keep the footage secret after it was already shown in open court last month, according to Thomas Burke, a San Francisco-based lawyer who represented news media attempting to gain access to evidence in the case.
The motive: Police Lt. Carla Hurley, who interviewed DePape at San Francisco General Hospital the day of the attack, testified he said he sought to attack Nancy Pelosi because she is ‘the second in line to the presidency,’ and told her: ‘There is evil in Washington.’ She was not home at the time.” [USA Today]
Republicans Re-elect Head of the R.N.C. After a Heated Challenge
Ronna McDaniel won a fourth two-year term to lead the Republican National Committee, fending off a fierce challenge after the party’s poor midterm showing.
By Lisa Lerer and Jonathan Weisman
“DANA POINT, Calif. — Members of the Republican National Committee re-elected Ronna McDaniel on Friday to a fourth two-year term at the helm of the party, despite an angry pressure campaign from conservative activists and spirited calls from inside the committee for a leadership change after three successive elections of defeats and disappointments.
Ms. McDaniel, a Michigan G.O.P. insider chosen in 2017 by President Donald J. Trump to lead the party, beat back a fierce challenge by Harmeet Dhillon, a member from California who was backed by an eclectic coalition of both far-right conservatives and members opposed to Mr. Trump’s third bid for the White House.
Ms. McDaniel, 49, a granddaughter of a moderate Republican governor of Michigan, George Romney, and a niece of Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, promised to be the agent of change that Republican activists wanted and to keep the committee neutral in the coming presidential primary contest. Those pledges, and years cultivating connections with the committee’s 168 members, proved unbeatable as the party gears up for what could become a wide-open race for the 2024 Republican nomination.
‘We need the continuity at this point in time,’ said Mike Kuckelman, the chairman of the Kansas Republican Party. ‘There’s really no one challenging her that offers anything that is materially different than what she will do as our leader.’
But the contentious battle over what is typically a low-key campaign for R.N.C. chair exposed a party struggling to find its way amid deep discontent. Republicans lost the House in 2018 and the White House and Senate in 2020, and then turned in a historically anemic performance for a party out of power in 2022.
Supporters of Ms. Dhillon posted committee members’ personal email accounts online, resulting in a flood of contentious messages, and activists made phone calls and even personal visits to members. Ms. McDaniel mounted her own campaign, persuading members to promise their support, doing media tours of conservative news outlets and distributing bright-orange pins that read “Roll with Ronna” — a version of a slogan used by her grandfather during his campaigns for Michigan governor in the 1960s.
The fight mirrored the fractious, intraparty disputes that held up Kevin McCarthy’s bid to be House speaker and that Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, faced in holding on to his leadership position. In the end, Ms. McDaniel won 111 votes, slightly more than two-thirds of the members who cast private ballots at the luxurious seaside Waldorf Astoria resort in Dana Point, Calif., where the meeting was held. Ms. Dhillon secured only 51 votes….” Read more at New York Times
FDA to Allow More Gay, Bisexual Men to Donate Blood
New rules would continue to bar donations from people who have tested positive for HIV or are taking HIV medication
The FDA guidelines would subject all blood donors to the same set of questions, regardless of their gender or sexual orientation.PHOTO: AMIR HAMJA FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
“The Food and Drug Administration released guidelines that would allow gay and bisexual men in monogamous relationships to donate blood without abstaining from sex, a shift in a decades-old policy set during the start of the AIDS crisis.
The guidelines would subject all blood donors to the same set of questions, regardless of their gender or sexual orientation. People who have had anal intercourse with a new sexual partner in the last three months wouldn’t be allowed to donate blood, the FDA said. The Wall Street Journal reported in November that the agency was preparing to make the change.
‘We will continue to work to make sure we have policies that allow everyone who wants to donate blood to be able to donate blood, within what the science allows to keep the blood supply safe,’ said Peter Marks, head of the FDA division that regulates blood.
Advocates pushed the agency to change its blood-donation rules for years. The FDA limited blood donation by gay and bisexual men during the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, when tests for HIV weren’t considered sensitive enough to protect the blood supply. The FDA modified the ban in 2015, saying that gay and bisexual men had to abstain from sex for one year before donating. Federal officials cut the abstinence period to three months during the pandemic, amid severe blood shortages….” Read more at Wall Street Journal
DC AG declines to charge mother of Ashli Babbitt, Jan. 6 protester killed by police
“Prosecutors have declined to file charges against the mother of Ashli Babbitt, Micki Witthoeft, who was arrested on traffic charges this month on the two-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot where her daughter was fatally shot by a police officer.
Witthoeft, 58, was arrested as she and other District of Columbia protesters blocked traffic on Independence Avenue, U.S. Capitol Police said in a news release.
Police gave the group multiple warnings to get out of the road. Refusing to leave, Witthoeft instead turned around with her hands behind her back and asked to be arrested, the police statement said. She was arrested on citations for failure to comply with an order and obstructing roadways. Witthoeft was released later the same day.
The case went to the office of D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb. Prosecutors there declined to file court charges against Witthoeft, said Gabe Showglow-Rubenstein, a spokesman for Schwalb. He said the office does not discuss charging decisions.
Babbitt, 35, was shot while attempting to break into the House chamber on Jan. 6, 2021. Graphic videos of the shooting show the Air Force veteran wore a Trump flag as a cape while she emerged from a crowd of protestors and tried to crawl through a broken window. One shot rang out, and Babbitt fell, bleeding from an apparent neck wound.
Lt. Michael Byrd, the Capitol Police officer who fatally shot Babbitt, was cleared of wrongdoing after an internal review by the agency found his actions were ‘consistent with the officer’s training and (U.S. Capitol Police) policies.’
Byrd, in an interview with NBC, said he believed his action helped save others from injury or death. Nonetheless, he suffered threats after his identity became public….” Read more at USA Today
Trump heads to South Carolina amid growing headwinds in state
BY MAX GREENWOOD AND JULIA MANCHESTER
“Former President Trump is facing intensifying political headwinds in South Carolina, a key early primary state that will play host over the weekend to one of the first high-profile stops of his 2024 White House campaign.
While he’s already racked up endorsements from prominent South Carolina Republicans like Gov. Henry McMaster and Sen. Lindsey Graham, both of whom are expected to attend Trump’s event at the state Capitol in Columbia on Saturday, others are keeping their distance.
The state’s junior senator, Tim Scott (R), hasn’t backed Trump’s 2024 campaign and is said to be seriously considering a presidential bid of his own. Likewise, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, another influential South Carolina Republican, has hinted that she’s weighing a run for the White House.
There are also growing rumblings of support for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), according to several Republicans in the state, who warned that Trump’s grip on South Carolina’s GOP voters is far more tenuous than it used to be….” Read more at The Hill
New Zealand’s Largest City Grapples With Aftermath of Devastating Floods
At least three people were killed in the flooding in Auckland that forced hundreds of people from their homes and shut down the city’s airport, which was submerged.
“A child asleep on a couch floating in the water. Two thousand passengers trapped in a flooded airport. Hundreds of people evacuated from their homes.
The morning after the worst downpour since record-keeping began for Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, residents were grappling with the scale of the damage after flash flooding swept through on Friday night.
Late Saturday morning, Chris Hipkins, New Zealand’s new prime minister, flew over the city in the cockpit of a military plane from Wellington, the capital, to assess the damage from the air. An earlier departure had been delayed by bad weather.
Three people have been found dead, the police said, and at least one has been reported missing. The emergency services responded to more than 700 weather-related incidents, the authorities said, amid a record number of more than 2,000 calls in less than 24 hours. The city received almost 240 millimeters of rain — almost 10 inches — of rainfall in just a few hours, according to the MetService, the country’s national weather service….” Read more at New York Times
Jerusalem Attack: Shooting at Synagogue Kills Seven People
Israeli authorities say the assailant was fatally shot after what they called a terrorist attack
“JERUSALEM—At least seven people were killed and three were injured Friday night when a Palestinian gunman opened fire outside a Jerusalem synagogue, in what authorities said was an act of terrorism.
The attack was Jerusalem’s deadliest since 2008, Israeli police said, and came at a time of heightened tensions following a military raid to capture militants in the West Bank city of Jenin that left nine Palestinians dead on Thursday.
Israeli authorities said the gunman was Khaire Alkam, 21 years old, a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem with no former security record. Mr. Alkam opened fire at 8:15 p.m. on people near the Ateret Avraham synagogue in a Jewish neighborhood of East Jerusalem, Neve Ya’akov, Israeli authorities said….” Read more at Wall Street Journal
The Israeli border police at the site of the shooting.Mahmoud Illean/Associated Press
Americans Are Gobbling Up Takeout Food. Restaurants Bet That Won’t Change.
America’s biggest chains test digital-only restaurants and more drive throughs, gambling that heightened consumer demand for food to go will last well beyond the pandemic
“McDonald’s Corp. red down pointing triangle has a new restaurant outside Fort Worth, Texas, with no tables or seats for customers and a conveyor belt that routes food to drivers who order ahead. Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. green up pointing triangle also offers no place for customers to sit inside an Ohio restaurant that only takes digital orders. Taco Bell is evaluating a new design that features four drive-through lanes, double the typical two.
America’s biggest restaurant companies made a bet during the pandemic that you would rather eat the food cooked on their premises someplace else. Now they are gambling you will want to do so for years to come.
The strategy from these giant chains is to orient their operations around drive-throughs and online ordering while testing new restaurant concepts that only serve food to go. They say these designs will make them more profitable and efficient since restaurants that bring fewer customers inside cost less to build, maintain and staff.
The challenge these companies face is to make such changes without sacrificing hospitality. Their risk is that consumer behavior accelerated by the pandemic becomes fleeting, as happened with exercise bikes, streaming of movies and shopping from home.
Demand for takeout is still strong even after dropping from peaks reached during the first year of the pandemic. Of all orders placed at U.S. fast-food restaurants in 2022, 85% were taken to go, according to market research firm the NPD Group. That is down from a high of 90% during 2020 but up from roughly 76% in the years leading up to the pandemic. Among full-service restaurants, 33% of orders were to go in 2022—nearly double prepandemic rates.
Even casual sit-down establishments and places known for their cafe culture predict they will have fewer seats going forward. Starbucks Corp., which long described itself as a ‘third place’ for customers to gather after home and work, plans to add nearly 400 U.S. stores with only delivery or pickup service in the next three years. In its quarter ending Oct. 2, 72% of its U.S. sales were taken to go.
‘That is a complete turnaround for where it once was, which was the majority of the business was in our store,’ Starbucks interim Chief Executive Howard Schultz said in an interview.
A customer exits a Starbucks coffee shop in Manhattan last year. The company plans to add nearly 400 U.S. stores with only delivery or pickup service in the next three years. PHOTO: GABBY JONES FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The concept of taking your food and beverages to go took root in the years after World War II, as everyday Americans embraced automobile culture and became more mobile. One of the first to allow drivers to take their meals with them was an In-N-Out Burger that opened in 1948. The California restaurant let customers order from their cars using a two-way speaker box, and it had no seating inside.
Another chain that made a name for itself with drive-through service was Jack in the Box Inc., which launched in 1951 from San Diego. It also had a two-way intercom, and a clown mascot projecting from the roof.
It wasn’t until the 1970s that some of the biggest names in the industry fully embraced the to-go idea. Wendy’s Co. introduced its ‘pick-up’ window in 1970, and the first McDonald’s drive-through happened in 1975, in Sierra Vista, Ariz. The restaurant added a sliding window so it could serve soldiers at a nearby Army base who weren’t allowed to leave their vehicles while wearing their uniforms. The fast food drive-through soon became ubiquitous in many cities and suburbs across the country.
McDonald’s, like many other fast-food chains, weathered the early days of the pandemic better than many sit-down restaurants due to its large number of drive-through lanes. Nearly 95% of its 13,435 U.S. locations have them.
Drive-through service accounted for as much as 90% of the company’s U.S. business in 2020, up from roughly two-thirds before the pandemic, and in 2021 McDonald’s launched a loyalty program to entice U.S. customers to order online.
Chief Executive Chris Kempczinski said in an interview this month that new store formats, including ones without dining rooms, will play a role as the company seeks to add new restaurants in coming years. ‘That’s certainly going to be another opportunity for us,’ he said.
One such experiment is a location in suburban Fort Worth that opened last month. Its most distinctive feature is an automated delivery system for customers who order ahead on the McDonald’s app. When you pull up to the window in the ‘order ahead’ lane, a conveyor delivers your food or beverage with help from a robotic arm that pushes the bag out to the waiting car. There is another drive-through lane for customers who want to order the traditional way.
At a new McDonald's outside Fort Worth, Texas, to-go orders arrive via a conveyor belt to customers who ordered ahead online.PHOTO: MCDONALD'S
Inside the boxy Texas restaurant, which is smaller than a conventional McDonald’s, there is also a pick-up room for delivery drivers as well as kiosks where customers can place their orders to go before retrieving them from a pick-up shelf. But there is no seating for customers, nor any playrooms for children.
Luis Silva, a healthcare worker from Arlington, Texas, said he thought the design of the new suburban Fort Worth McDonald’s was intriguing when he checked it out last month. But he said he hopes the brand doesn’t go too far with the concept.
‘It is like one huge vending machine,’ Mr. Silva said. ‘I love the ambience and the people serving us. I hate to see McDonald’s lose that.’…
At the new McDonald's outside Fort Worth, Texas, there are no seats and tables inside for customer. But there is a pick-up room for delivery drivers as well as kiosks where customers can place their orders to go before retrieving them from a shelf.PHOTO: MCDONALD'S
McDonald’s said: ‘We value the space and community our traditional restaurants create, so restaurants with dine-in service are and will continue to be an important way we serve our communities.’
McDonald’s is also exploring new ways of selling its food outside of traditional restaurants. Its CEO said he is interested in expanding on some of the chain’s experiments of selling just its desserts in kiosks in Latin America, or stand-alone McCafe units that have operated in Australia and Canada.
‘We always have this tension where the customer is willing to buy more from us but our kitchens can’t do more stuff because it adds more complexity,’ Mr. Kempczinski said.
Starbucks was another big chain that helped offset the dining disruption caused by the pandemic with to-go orders. It had for years allowed customers to order ahead and pay via its app.
The to-go transition was still challenging for a company that long touted its cafes as meeting spaces for civic engagement, with bathrooms open to the general public since 2018. Mr. Schultz, who built the company into a global brand and returned as interim CEO last April, has acknowledged Starbucks cafes now are often clogged with pick-up, drive-through, delivery and cafe orders all at once. The result: long lines and frustrated customers.
Workers are so crushed by to-go orders that they have turned off app ordering at times, reducing the chain’s sales and frustrating customers, some store managers have said. Delivery orders can also overwhelm stores, they said.
‘Starbucks would benefit from a pickup system with big stickers on cups, because yelling out drink names on busy locations does not help,’ said Gerry Pedraza, a 47-year-old instructional designer from Texas who said he’s recently had his coffee orders go missing given a frenzy of people picking up drinks at once.
Starbucks said it hopes an overhaul of its cafes and investments in new equipment will make employees more efficient and speed up orders. It plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to update its stores.
It also plans to build a lot of new stores, and new locations are being designed for more specific purposes as a way of alleviating the current congestion. One location might churn out delivery orders with no other means of ordering, while another might allow customers to pick up mobile orders only. The goal is 700 more U.S. stores in the next three years with drive-throughs as the primary means of sales. Traditional cafes are set to decline to 54% of the company’s 18,000 overall U.S. stores by 2025, from 61% today.
‘We don’t have to have all stores doing all things for all people,’ said Katie Young, senior vice president of global growth and development.
To-go-focused restaurants stand to vastly expand the reach of other chains such as Taco Bell and KFC. Their parent company, Yum Brands Inc., told investors last month that it believes it can over time add 100,000 global restaurants to its approximately 54,000 brand locations, and that its Taco Bell division could someday rival McDonald’s in the U.S. with roughly 13,000 locations. The designs discussed include a Taco Bell with four drive-through lanes and a KFC that is just a kitchen, with no public bathrooms or seats.
Taco Bell is testing a four-lane drive through in Brooklyn Park, Minn.PHOTO: YUM BRANDS
‘We’re probably entering a phase in the industry where there’ll be more innovation around the formats that are deployed to meet today’s consumer needs,’ said Yum Chief Executive David Gibbs in an interview.
Chipotle is another restaurant operator that relied on to-go orders for survival during the pandemic and views them as a way to expand. It has said it plans to open between 255 and 285 restaurants in 2023, and that at least 80% of them will have online-only order lanes the company calls ‘Chipotlanes.’
It is also testing restaurants that only serve food to go. Its first was in Highland Falls, N.Y., chosen for its proximity to thousands of digitally savvy cadets housed at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, according to Chipotle Chief Development Officer Tabassum Zalotrawala. Then in 2021, it converted a former bank branch with a drive-through to an online-order-only restaurant in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. The bank’s 1,200-square-foot interior could fit a kitchen but not a dining room. Its name for the concept is the ‘Chipotlane Digital Kitchen.’
The Akron suburb already has three other Chipotles within a 5-mile radius of the new site, but those restaurants were already busy and none had the pickup windows or online order drive-throughs that deliver some of the chain’s best returns, Ms. Zalotrawala said. More to-go test locations will soon open in Maryland and Southern California, she said.
What Ms. Zalotrawala said she has learned is that to-go-only restaurants can cut costs. ‘You’re not having to allocate labor to clean restrooms, to clean dining rooms and to maintain the soda station,’ she said.
They also work best, she said, in established markets where a brand doesn’t have to cultivate new customers, and can instead help respond to existing demand.
Some people, she said, still want to eat together and be social. ‘You’ve got to be very thoughtful and mindful about where we put these types of small or alternate formats because it’s not for everyone,’ she said.” [Wall Street Journal]
Jay Leno Is Recovering From Surgery After a Motorcycle Accident
The former late-night host and comedian drove into a wire a few miles from his garage in Burbank, Calif., he said in an interview. It comes two months after he sustained burns while working on his cars.
“Jay Leno, the former ‘Tonight Show’ host also known for his obsession with cars, had surgery on Tuesday to repair multiple broken bones after a motorcycle accident in early January, he said in an interview on Friday.
He seemed to be back in good spirits: ‘A 72-year-old man driving an 83-year-old motorcycle. What could go wrong?’ he quipped.
In his latest accident, two months after he sustained burns while working on cars in his garage, Mr. Leno said he was test riding a 1940 Indian four-cylinder motorcycle with a sidecar on Jan. 17, when he noticed the smell of gas coming from the bike.
He turned down a side street to check the motorcycle and was thrown off it after riding through a wire he could not see. The accident left him with a scar across his neck, two broken ribs, two broken kneecaps and a snapped collarbone that he had surgically repaired.
‘It’s a little painful, but it’s not the end of the world,’ he said. ‘Luckily, I’m only 72. If I had been an older man, this could have been very serious.’
Despite the injuries, the comedian insisted during the interview that he was in good physical condition and said he would be recovered enough to work this weekend.
His Sunday night show at the Comedy and Magic Club in Hermosa Beach, Calif., which he still plans to do, is sold out. He also has shows scheduled in Arizona and Ohio in the coming weeks.
Mr. Leno cracked a joke about the crash on Twitter, writing on Friday, ‘I was riding my motorcycle up in Lake Tahoe and I came around the corner and bam, I crashed into Jeremy Renner’s snowplow.’….” Read more at New York Times
Rebellion Over College Rankings Seems Likely to Fail
U.S. News, others turn to public data to determine standings as some schools reject surveys
Harvard is among the universities that have stopped cooperating with U.S. News & World Report on the publication’s rankings of law and medical schools.PHOTO: CHARLES KRUPA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
“In the past two weeks, Harvard, Stanford and Columbia universities, the University of Pennsylvania and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai said they would stop cooperating with U.S. News & World Report’s medical-school rankings.
That followed the decision last year by universities including Yale, Georgetown, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia and California, Berkeley to quit cooperating on the publication’s law-school rankings.
Critics are cheering the exodus from a process they say leads students to focus on external prestige rather than education quality and encourages schools to game rankings at the expense of students. The schools that are withdrawing say the rankings are elitist, and penalize institutions that admit strong candidates without high test scores.
‘In the 40 years of rankings, this is the biggest shock to the system—that gives me hope,’ said Colin Diver, a former president of Reed College, which has long abstained from the U.S. News ranking. Mr. Diver is the author of ‘Breaking Ranks: How the Rankings Industry Rules Higher Education and What to Do About It.’
On the one hand, relying on public data makes U.S. News’s rankings somewhat less distinctive. Many initiatives are built largely from these same sources. For example, The Wall Street Journal also publishes college rankings. On the other hand, this same proliferation of rankings shows the hunger of students for such information.
In a written statement, a spokeswoman for U.S. News said it would continue to rank law schools by drawing on the voluminous data that law schools are required to make available to the American Bar Association, ‘whether or not schools respond to our annual survey.’
For example, the ABA requires schools to report bar-passage rates and employment rates. That data can still feed U.S. News’s ranking for placement success, currently an additional 26% of the law-school weighting.
But hopes that this marks the death knell for college rankings are likely to be in vain. The reality is that what the schools themselves contribute to the rankings is relatively small: The data includes test scores, alumni giving, financial information and so on. But most of the data used to determine the rankings can be derived from publicly available information, or surveys conducted by U.S. News itself. Indeed, U.S. News has revised the survey over the years in response to criticism. There is a case to be made that the less the schools contribute, the more objective the rankings might become, in some respects.
Large sections of the U.S. News ranking are measures of a school’s reputation, so are mostly unaffected by a few withdrawals.
For the undergraduate rankings, 20% of the score is assigned from a survey asking institutions to assess each other. For law schools, 25% comes from peer assessment and 15% from a survey of lawyers and judges. For medical schools, 30% of the score comes from the assessment of peer institutions and residency directors. By comparison, standardized tests are 5% of the weighting for national universities, 11.25% for law schools, 13% for research-focused medical schools and 9.75% for primary-care medical schools.
When the U.S. News rankings began in 1983, peer assessment was the source of the ranking, with schools simply asked to rank which other schools were the best. Critics such as Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College, compared this to judging for ‘figure skating but with fewer rules.’
But the reality is that many applicants care what people think of their school, and the withdrawal of a few dozen institutions, even the prominent ones, doesn’t end the ability of U.S. News to conduct the survey with everyone else.
U.S. News collects much of its academic data via its questionnaire to schools. But versions of that data are available elsewhere, from accrediting groups or the Education Department. (U.S. News discloses its weightings, but not the exact methodology to create scores in each bucket.)…” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Amy Robach, T.J. Holmes will not return to 'GMA' following alleged affair, ABC News says
“Following weeks of speculation about their fate on "GMA3," Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes have officially been ousted from the afternoon news program following their alleged affair.
‘After several productive conversations with Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes, about different options, we all agreed it’s best for everyone that they move on from ABC News,’ an ABC spokesperson told USA TODAY Friday. ‘We recognize their talent and commitment over the years and are thankful for their contributions.’
The decision comes about one month after ABC temporarily sidelined the co-anchors, both separately married, calling the allegations a ‘distraction.’ Photographs and videos published by the Daily Mail in November showed the duo cozying up. One picture showed the two holding hands. Another Holmes patting Robach on the bottom.
‘It's become an internal and an external distraction, the relationship between two of our colleagues,’ ABC News President Kim Godwin alerted the editorial staff in December, according to an employee on the call who was not authorized to share details publicly. ‘While the relationship is not a violation of company policies, I have taken the last few days to think through what I think is best for our organization. For now, I'm going to take Amy and T.J. off the air while we figure this out.’
Later that month, Holmes filed a petition for divorce from immigration attorney Marilee Fiebig, whom he married in March 2010 and shares 9-year-old daughter Sabine with.
‘Marilee’s sole focus has remained on the overall best interests of her nine-year-old daughter,’ Fiebig's attorney Stephanie Lehman said in a statement to the DailyMail earlier this month. ‘To that end, TJ’s attorney and I have been working together to move their divorce forward privately, expeditiously, and as amicably as possible.’
Lehman confirmed the report to USA TODAY.” [USA Today]
Sabalenka beats Rybakina for Australian Open women’s title
By HOWARD FENDRICH
“MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — The serves were big. So big. Other shots, too. The points were over quickly. So quickly: Seven of the first 13 were aces.
And so it was immediately apparent in the Australian Open women’s final between Aryna Sabalenka and Elena Rybakina that the one who could manage to keep her serve in line, get a read on returns and remain steady at the tightest moments would emerge victorious.
That turned out to be Sabalenka, a 24-year-old from Belarus, who won her first Grand Slam title by coming back to beat Wimbledon champion Rybakina 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 at Melbourne Park on Saturday night, using 17 aces among her 51 total winners to overcome seven double-faults….” Read more at AP News