Planned Parenthood, Eric Garner, ISIS: Your Monday Evening Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/briefing/planned-parenthood-eric-garner-isis.html

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Good evening. Here’s the latest.

1. The “purpose of a corporation” just changed.

The chief executives of nearly 200 of the nation’s largest companies pledged to revise the longstanding principle that shareholder interests come first.

In a statement issued by their association, Business Roundtable, the executives — including all those pictured above — said companies must also invest in employees, deliver value to customers, deal fairly and ethically with suppliers and support local communities.

The move was seen as both a recognition of corporate evolution and a tacit acknowledgment of the scrutiny companies are facing.

Meanwhile, the White House, while publicly dismissing any notion that a recession may be near, is pulling together contingency plans in case the economy weakens further.

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2. Planned Parenthood rejected Title X funds.

The organization said it would no longer accept the federal grants rather than comply with a new Trump administration rule that restricts what health providers can say about abortion. Above, a protest against the rule in February.

The move could affect 1.5 million low-income women who rely on Planned Parenthood for services like birth control, pregnancy tests and screening for sexually transmitted diseases. The group receives about $60 million of the $286 million given annually by Title X to health centers.

The administration said that clinics accepting the funds could not refer women to an abortion provider or suggest where to obtain an abortion. Planned Parenthood and many other organizations say that would force them to withhold medical information and interfere with the doctor-patient relationship.

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3. One firing, one reassignment in two major cases.

The New York City police officer whose chokehold was partly blamed for Eric Garner’s death in police custody in 2014 was fired by the police commissioner, ending a bitter, five-year legal battle.

Commissioner James O’Neill, above, made it clear he had anguished over the decision and, after delivering a sprawling examination of the case, took to Twitter to support the police force. “We recruit from the human race,” he wrote. “We’re not perfect. But, the next time you’re walking down the street and you feel safe, thank the N.Y.P.D.”

And Attorney General William Barr announced that the acting director of the Bureau of Prisons was reassigned, the latest fallout over the suicide of the financier Jeffrey Epstein at a federal jail in Manhattan. Mr. Barr named Kathleen Hawk Sawyer, who ran the bureau from 1992 to 2003, to replace him.

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4. The Islamic State is gathering new strength.

Five months after American-backed forces ousted the Islamic State from its last territory in Syria, the terror group is conducting guerrilla attacks across Iraq and Syria, retooling its financial networks and targeting new recruits, including in the camp above in Kurdish-controlled northern Syria.

For now, American and international forces can only try to ensure that the group remains contained and away from urban areas. ISIS has mobilized as many as 18,000 remaining fighters in Iraq and Syria and can still tap a large war chest of as much as $400 million.

The group also claimed an attack in Afghanistan that killed scores of people at a wedding over the weekend.

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5. Twitter and Facebook removed Chinese accounts.

The social media companies said they found evidence that China, where the sites are blocked, had been waging a disinformation war about the demonstrations in Hong Kong. Above, Sunday’s mass protest.

Twitter took down hundreds of accounts originating in mainland China that claimed the protesters were acting violently and that accused them of ulterior motives. Facebook excised a dozen pages.

“We’re constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don’t want our services to be used to manipulate people,” Facebook said.

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6. Elizabeth Warren apologized at a Native American forum.

The Massachusetts senator and presidential candidate said she was sorry for the “harm” that she caused by her past claims of Native American ancestry.

She was met with a standing ovation when she took the stage. On Friday, Ms. Warren rolled out a set of proposals intended to help Native Americans, covering topics like tribal sovereignty and missing indigenous women.

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7. Thailand’s roads are deadly, especially for the poor.

A Times investigation found that in Thailand, which has one of the highest rates of traffic deaths, the poor are far more likely to be killed in accidents than the rich and well-connected.

Much of what makes the roads so deadly boils down to the vehicles. The cars driven by the wealthy tend to be new, while many Thai families can afford only a single scooter or motorcycle, setting up a devastating mismatch. Above, the aftermath of an accident in Bangkok in April.

But justice is also uneven. The wealthy often go unpunished for speeding or driving while drunk.

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8. Warnings about drinking alcohol during pregnancy may backfire.

Punitive approaches — like equating drinking with child abuse or threatening to involve child protective services — can dissuade women from getting prenatal care, our medical contributor writes.

Most medical organizations say that the only quantity of alcohol known to be “safe” is none, and that pregnant women should not drink at all. But policies that punish women may convince mothers-to-be that even talking with their physicians isn’t a good idea, research shows.

One alternative is for doctors to engage with women who drink during pregnancy to find out — from them — what would help.

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9. A mega-chip for computers.

A Silicon Valley start-up, Cerebras, unveiled what it claims is the largest chip ever built. It’s as big as a dinner plate — 100 times the size of a typical chip.

The engineers believe it can be used in giant data centers and help accelerate advances in artificial intelligence.

Moving big chunks of A.I. data between small chips can be slow. Cerebras’s giant chip is meant to keep the data together, for faster processing, though its performance claims have not been independently verified.

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10. And finally, an Orwellian world on Amazon.

The works of George Orwell, whose classic “1984” described the wholesale rewriting of historical records, are the victims of a 21st-century version of “Newspeak.”

Our reporter explored the world of counterfeit books on Amazon by buying a dozen Orwell books. Some were blatantly illegal, published without permission of the author’s estate. Others were full of typos and revised wording.

Others even changed the titles. One edition of “Animal Farm: A Fairy Story” referred to itself on the back cover as “Animals Farm: A Fair Story.” The preface referred to another Orwell work, “Homage to Catalonia,” as “Homepage to Catalonia.”

Have a doubleplusgood evening.

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