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  • The US has a lot to learn from Taiwan's Covid fight

    When reports of a coronavirus were reported in China, officials in Taiwan wasted no time implementing a plan of action to control the spread within their own region. Having learned from the SARS outbreak of 2003, authorities were prepared to respond to a public health crisis and quickly implemented a transparent and coordinated effort that prioritized testing, contact tracing and isolation.

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  • How do you (safely) catch a falling bear?

    After a failed removal attempt of a bear cub from a tree, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife for North Puget Sound decided they needed a new high-strength tarp. With a reported increase in the number of wildlife sightings, the one net they had in stock for the six-county region wasn’t always easy to deploy. So they secured funding for a tailor-made catch net that could be used for both cougar and bear removals.

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  • They envisioned a world without police. Inside Seattle's CHOP zone, protesters struggled to make it real

    The police-free zone that emerged during Seattle's protests in June 2020 was meant to demonstrate how safety could be provided by the community itself. But the six-square-block area, called the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) and then Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP), devolved into chaos and deadly violence thanks in part to the inability of organizers and their security team to keep armed people from committing violence. When fistfights turned into multiple shootings, and an ambulance crew could not reach a shooting victim, who died, police finally moved in and cleared the area.

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  • Police reformers push for de-escalation training, but the jury is out on its effectiveness

    Teaching police de-escalation tactics to avoid the use of force in a crisis is a popular suggestion in the police-reform debate, but a number of structural deficits make success a great unknown. Before police departments embrace the concept, they must first realize there has been no rigorous testing of any particular training regimen for effectiveness, nor do any national standards on use of force exist. Police training and the definition of de-escalation tactics are both highly fractured, lacking common definitions based on proven effectiveness.

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  • As Domestic Abuse Rises, U.K. Failings Leave Victims in Peril

    Ignoring the pleas of victim-aid groups and the examples set by other countries, the British government and courts failed to protect domestic violence victims during the pandemic. Italy, Spain, Germany, and New Zealand provided for emergency shelter for victims trapped at home with their abusers or made other preparations a formal part of their lockdown plans. But in England, where at least 26 deaths and multiple cases of abuse are blamed on the government’s failures, shelters overflowed and orders of protection went unenforced because of a lack of funding and effective planning.

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  • Texas's High School Voter Registration Law Fails to Live Up to Ideals

    A Texas law requiring high school principals to register eligible student voters has failed because it is unequally carried out, not enforceable or tracked, and other obstacles to vote prevent students from casting ballots. While the law was an impressive attempt to increase the civic participation of young people, many high schools have not participated. A 2019 report shows that only 38% of schools with at least 20 seniors requested voter registration forms. A confounding obstacle is a 2013 voter ID law that requires voters to show one of seven forms of photo identification, but student IDs are not eligible

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  • 'Nip the virus in the bud': How Germany showed Europe the way on coronavirus testing

    Germany has implemented a variety of methods to contain the coronavirus, but their policy of "open public testing" has been a vital component of successfully slowing the spread of the virus. Although the policy was not in place from the start due to insurance limitations, once enacted, it allowed for asymptomatic people to be tested and has reportedly slowed outbreaks throughout the country.

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  • The World's Best Healthcare Systems: Ezekiel Emanuel

    As evidenced in COVID-19 case comparisons, the U.S. health-care system has not performed as well as other countries to offer health-care access, yet is still "spends far more money on healthcare than any other nation." Other countries, such as Switzerland and Taiwan, offer guidance on how to learn from the system's failures, especially as it relates to emergency preparedness and price regulations.

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  • When it comes to police oversight, many watchdogs lack teeth

    The most effective civilian oversight agencies that act as watchdogs over police discipline are empowered to conduct independent investigations, impose discipline on individual officers, and influence disciplinary policy. One of the strongest, in Oakland, forced the police chief out of office over police shootings and diversity on the police force. But the lessons to be learned in this field come more often from the many examples of structural flaws that render civilian oversight powerless to counter the wishes of the police, or even to be listened to.

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  • Police Training In America: How Can We Fix A Broken System?

    Police training often is the suggested fix after controversial incidents of alleged brutality, but training is only one piece of a much larger set of cultural, racial, and social issues. Reforming training in de-escalation tactics on its own has not generally changed a warrior mentality that preaches dominance and hypervigilance to counter perceived resistance or threats with overwhelming force, say a journalist who covers policing and a former police officer and researcher who studies use of force policies. They examine one fatal shooting and why training failed to prevent tragedy.

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