Latest news with #CONCORD
Washington Post
3 days ago
- Automotive
- Washington Post
Trackhouse Racing signs Shane van Gisbergen to multiyear extension
CONCORD, N.C. — After making the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs as a rookie, Shane van Gisbergen has earned a multiyear extension with Trackhouse Racing. The team announced Friday that the Auckland, New Zealand, native will continue 'for years to come.' No further terms were released. With victories from the pole position at Mexico City , Chicago and Sonoma Raceway, van Gisbergen has secured the fourth seed in the 2025 playoffs with three races remaining in the regular season.
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
New Hampshire House Again Votes to Expand School Voucher Program
This article was originally published in InDepthNH. CONCORD — After voting to cut off debate on the latest Education Freedom Account expansion bill, the House Republican majority approved a bill that would do away with an income cap beginning July 1. Under the bill, there would be a 10,000 student cap on the program that has grown in four years from 1,635 students to about 5,400 students and in cost from $8 million to over $30 million. Currently there is an income cap of 350 percent of the federal poverty level — or $112,525 for a family of four — on the program that would be eliminated next school year under Senate Bill 295, which the House passed Thursday. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter House Bill 115, which is now before the Senate, would eliminate the cap beginning with the 2026-2027 school year, and would have a cap of 400 percent next school year, or $128,600 for a family of four. Deputy Majority Leader Joe Sweeney, R-Salem, moved the previous question as the bill came to the floor which cuts off debate on the issue. The House has debated the issue at length this session and in the past, he said. But Rep. Laura Telerski, D-Nashua, opposed the motion saying the issue of school vouchers is extremely important to the public and voters want to hear what their representatives have to say about it, and urged her colleagues to vote against 'the silencing of the debate.' But the House voted 185-155 to cut off debate before it began. Under the bill, if enrollment in the program reaches 90 percent of the student limit, the cap would be increased by 25 percent or to 12,500 the following school year. The bill also sets up a priority system if the cap is reached before the expansion. The priorities would be: 1. Student currently enrolled in the program, 2. Sibling of an enrolled student, 3. Student with disabilities, and 4. Student with family income less than 350 percent of the federal poverty guidelines. Rep. David Luneau, D-Hopkinton, tried to amend the bill to require a performance audit currently being done by the Legislative Budget Assistant's Office, be completed and the organization administering the program have 'a clean bill of health' before there could be any expansion of the program. He noted a sample audit several years ago found that 12 out of 50 applications were approved in error by the Children's Scholarship Fund that administers the program. The amendment would force the company to comply with 'The laws and rules we have passed in this body and to take what we are doing seriously,' Luneau said. But House Education Funding Chair Rep. Rick Ladd, R-Haverhill, called the amendment another trap and delaying tactic to implementing the EFA program, noting no date has been set for the audit's release. And he said most performance audits are 120 pages with many findings that would have to be resolved before the program could be expanded. The amendment was defeated on a 199-165 vote. Rep. Hope Damon, D-Croydon, urged her colleagues to defeat the bill. '(We should not be) expanding the EFA voucher program to a cost of $100 million when we lack adequate revenues to fund essential needs of New Hampshire citizens, such as Medicaid, the state employee retirement system, affordable housing, and corrections safe staffing,' Damon said. 'We should fund our impressive university system that benefits our economy rather than paying stipends to wealthy families. And most importantly the public statewide has overwhelmingly and repeatedly opposed this Free State marketing scheme.' But Ladd said the program is not a voucher program or a voucher scam and not a recruiting tool for people moving into New Hampshire, but for parents justified in wanting alternatives if their child is struggling, or being bullied or not being challenged in a 'one-size-fits-all situation.' The bill was initially approved on a 188-176 vote and was sent to the House Finance Committee for review before coming back for a final vote. House Bill 115 has had a public hearing before the Senate Education Committee but has yet to come before the Senate for a vote. The House also approved Senate Bill 292 which would establish a floor under state aid for special education costs that exceed three-and-a-half times the average per pupil cost the previous year. School districts have been receiving prorated state reimbursement for those costs under what was the catastrophic aid program that have been about 50 percent of their expenditures. The bill would require that school districts receive at least 80 percent of their special education costs that reach the catastrophic level. The bill was referred to House Finance for review before a final vote is taken on the bill. Garry Rayno may be reached at This article first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
People of colour: there's a bias in how pictures are used to depict disease in global health publications
Photography is a powerful tool in storytelling and scientific communication. But it can also cause harm when used unethically. We started to realise how photographs can send the wrong message when we were approached, as a group of infectious disease specialists, to develop a presentation on resistance to antibiotics. Our audience was a clinical group in east Africa. The global health organisation that asked us to do this wanted to use its own branding on our teaching slides. But when we got our slides back, we found the organisation had used an image of black African women in traditional outfits looking like they were dancing and holding white candles. Confused, we pointed out that the photograph wasn't relevant to our work. We were told this was standard imaging verified for use in global health within the organisation. One of our colleagues pointed out that the image was of women in Nigeria going to church. We wondered whether an image of nuns would have been used for a health presentation to a European audience. After speaking about this experience with colleagues from different ethnic backgrounds, we decided to look at how people are represented in global health literature and publications about antibiotic resistance and vaccination. What we found was evidence of power imbalances in race, geography and gender. Through the choice of images in publications, women and children of colour in low income countries were treated with less dignity and respect than those in high income countries. Evidence of consent for using intrusive and unnecessary images was absent. And often the images were used out of context. We then tried to suggest some guidelines for using images more appropriately. The first step was to find out whether the use of photographs of people in global health was subject to any ethical standards or guides. We found guidelines from Photographers Without Borders, European Non-governmental Confederation for Relief and Development (CONCORD), Code of Conduct on Images and Messages, and the National Press Photographers Association – but no standards specific to health. This is a critical gap. While the concept of patient confidentiality is closely guarded in many countries, global health seems to slip through the net of regulation or guidelines. For instance, taking candid photos of patients, especially in healthcare settings, is strictly prohibited for research- and healthcare-related activities. Any such practices must be subject to strict ethical review processes and informed consent. But the regulations are not applied equitably or universally. Our evaluation of images of people used in global health looked at four aspects: relevance, integrity, consent and representation. We included in the review photographs of people that had been featured in publicly available documents from global health actors published between 2015 and 2022. In over 118 reports from 14 global health actors, there were 1,115 images. Of these, 859 included people. We found an over representation of people, including women and children of colour, in the images used. Two out of every three images were of people of colour, and for children this increased to nine out of every 10 images. Images that depicted people of colour were predominantly representing countries in the global south and were candid images of real life and often in healthcare settings. There were images of adults and children receiving healthcare, some in distressed situations or while receiving medical examinations. In contrast, images used from the global north depicted sterile settings, were often staged, and included actors. Overall, we found representations of people of colour and women and children from the global south to be more likely to be represented in ways that were inequitable and unethical. The persistent use of intrusive images was of particular concern. In the field of infectious diseases, global health and tropical medicine emerged as disciplines to protect white colonisers from the tropical climates and communicable diseases of the countries being colonised. Thus, historically, imagery in global health has also suffered from telling a story of diseases, war, famine, and poverty, to generate sympathy or funds for research and development. Photographs are powerful in the imprint they leave in the collective psyche. There are ethical responsibilities in how we capture, contextualise and distribute photographs of people. Global health photography has a different purpose from journalism. But the lack of ethical standards or guidelines has blurred the distinction. For example, recently the monkeypox outbreak in the north was visualised using black skin. And images of child victims of war and rape captured by Médecins Sans Frontières found their way into stock image libraries for sale. Current practices in use of photographs of people in global health run the risk of perpetuating attitudes that are rooted in colonialism and reinforcing racial stereotypes. They can reinforce 'white saviour' narratives, shaming, cultural appropriation and cultural exoticism. We have developed a framework to assist those who wish to visually represent people in global health within the boundaries of accepted standards. The aim is to: assure the relevance of the images depicted uphold the right to dignity and privacy of subjects provide a mechanism for transparent consent in participation of subjects in the photograph and its subsequent use ensure equitable and accurate representation of individuals and serve to counter stereotypes. Recognising how powerful and necessary imagery is, we urge all readers to view this framework and join the conversation to find a more ethical and equitable representation of health and illness that does not discriminate against people according to race, gender, geographic, cultural identity and age. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Esmita Charani, University of Liverpool and Marc Mendelson, University of Cape Town Read more: Train derailments get more headlines, but truck crashes involving hazardous chemicals are more frequent and deadly in US How queuing leads to city centre violence and what our research says about preventing night-time brawls Ghana wants fewer polluting old cars on the road. But it's going about it the wrong way Esmita Charani receives funding from Wellcome Trust, the Academy of Medical Sciences Hamied Foundation Fellowship, and the National Institute for Health Research UK. She has consulted on educational material related to antibiotic resistance for Pfizer and Biomerieux. Marc Mendelson receives funding from The Wellcome Trust.
