• Arbitrator says U. of California, Berkeley, owes student workers $5 million in back pay: The United Auto Workers Local 2865, the union for student employees, filed a grievance three years ago claiming the university intentionally scheduled student workers in the electrical engineering and computer sciences department for fewer than 10 hours a week to avoid giving them tuition and fee remission. The union’s contract states that students who work 10 hours or more a week must be given these. The results will affect hundreds of current and former student workers, mostly undergraduates, UAW 2865 says. A teaching assistant who worked less than 10 hours a week in the Fall 2019 who did not receive tuition and fee remission should expect a $7,500 check in the mail, the union said.
• Oldest solid material on Earth found in meteorite: The space rock has trapped 7-billion-year-old stardust inside. Scientists see this stardust as evidence of a “baby boom” in new stars that formed 7 billion years ago. That cuts against the view of many experts in the field that star formation happens at a steady, constant rate.
MIDDAY TWEETS
• 60,000 expected at gun show in Las Vegas this week, as firearms sales shrink: The National Shooting Sports Foundation, the gun industry’s lobby, will hold its annual SHOT show (Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade) in Las Vegas this week. The show, which has been held every year since 1979 in numerous cities, is now held in Las Vegas and will be through 2027. One issue again this year will be the falling gun sales that have hurt the firearms industry, including manufacturers such as Colt, Remington, and Ruger. Falling sales are common during periods of Republican administrations, reportedly because people most likely to buy firearms feel that fewer if any new gun restrictions will be enacted than under Democrats. In fact, no major national gun laws have been passed in a quarter-century during either Democratic or Republican administrations. A number of states have passed more restrictive laws in that period, even though most new state gun laws have relaxed restrictions. In Virginia Monday, gun advocates plan to show up in Richmond to protest a small package of modest gun restrictions that have already passed the state Senate, which, along with the governorship and House of Delegates, is now controlled by Democrats for the first time in years. The activists said they would come armed. Fearing violence, Gov. Ralph Northam last week temporarily banned the carrying of weapons, including firearms, on the capitol grounds from Friday through Tuesday.
• The three biggest lies the Trump regime has recently told us about Iran: In the wake of the assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the White House has spouted a number of what have unsurprisingly turned out to be bogus reasons for choosing this moment to kill the leader of the Quds force of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps, considered by the U.S. to be an instigator and coordinator of terrorism. The lies? 1) Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani was behind an “imminent threat” on four U.S. embassies; 2) Soleimani was involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks; 3) No U.S. troops were harmed by the Iranian missile strike on Iraqi bases where Americans are assigned.
• Does Evanston, Illinois, pot tax offer a blueprint for reparations? The city of 75,000 a dozen miles from downtown Chicago is levying a tax on newly legalized marijuana in the state that will pay for programs benefiting Africans Americans in recognition of the enduring effects of slavery and the war on drugs:
Developed in concert with Evanston’s Equity and Empowerment Commission and overwhelmingly approved by the city council late last year, the program is perhaps the first of its kind in the nation: an initiative designed to address the ongoing impacts of slavery on African Americans, with guaranteed funding from sales taxes on recreational marijuana, which became legal in Illinois on 1 January.