world news

Das könnte hinter Russlands erstaunlichen Corona-Zahlen stecken

Die Sterberate Corona-Infizierter in Russland ist extrem niedrig. Die Regierung verweist bei der Frage nach den Gründen auf den Erfolg der russischen Strategie – einige Bürger dagegen trauen der Zählweise der Toten nicht.




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Coesfeld verschiebt Lockerungen um eine Woche

Nach dem Ausbruch des Coronavirus in einer Fleischfabrik in Coesfeld werden die Lockerungen teilweise verschoben. Mit mehr als 50 Infizierten pro 100.000 Einwohner gilt der Kreis als Risikogebiet.




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Immer mehr Klagen gegen die Corona-Auflagen

Die Corona-Auflagen beschäftigen auch die deutschen Gerichte. Denn mittlerweile sind rund 1000 Eilanträge von Klägern gegen die Einschränkungen eingegangen, so der deutsche Richterbund.




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Arbeitslosenquote auf Höchststand seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg

In den USA haben allein im April 20 Millionen Menschen ihren Job verloren, infolge der Corona-Pandemie. Präsident Trump versucht, durch Optimismus gegenzusteuern, und zweifelt die Zahl der Todesopfer an.




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Wo Deutschland in der Epidemie wirklich steht

Viele Länder planen in der Corona-Krise ihre Rückkehr zum normalen Leben. Doch wer lockert, riskiert auch steigende Infektionszahlen. Der WELT-Überblick zeigt, wo sich die Entspannung rächt – und wo es Hoffnung gibt.




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„Je geringer die Infektionen, desto schwieriger wird es“

Wie sind Beschränkungen bei sinkenden Infektionszahlen überhaupt noch zu rechtfertigen? Und werden nach dem neuen Notfallmechanismus bei neuen Ausbrüchen ganze Städte abgeriegelt? Hessens Ministerpräsident Volker Bouffier (CDU) hält die kommende Phase für heikel.




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UN-Sicherheitsrat steht in der Pandemie vor einer „Schande“

Der UN-Sicherheitsrat findet angesichts der größten Bedrohung der Gegenwart keine gemeinsame Haltung. Ein ausgehandelter Kompromiss droht am Streit zwischen den USA und China zu scheitern. Die USA stoßen sich im Entwurf der Corona-Resolution an einer Erwähnung.




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Grüne fordern Palmer zum Parteiaustritt auf – Tübinger OB denkt gar nicht daran

Der Konflikt zwischen seiner Partei und Boris Palmer spitzt sich zu: Die Grünen fordern den Tübinger Oberbürgermeister auf, die Partei zu verlassen, der Beschluss fiel einstimmig. Palmer weist die Forderung entschieden zurück




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In diesen Landkreisen wird die Obergrenze bereits überschritten

In der Fleischfabrik Westfleisch in Coesfeld hat sich das Corona-Virus in den letzten Tagen rasant verbreitet: Mindestens 151 Mitarbeiter sind infiziert. Trotzdem ist lange nichts passiert.




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Frontex rechnet mit Migranten-Zustrom

Nach einem internen Bericht der Europäischen Grenzschutzagentur Frontex ist mit einem Zustrom von Migranten an der Grenze zwischen der Türkei und Griechenland zu rechnen. Der Bericht liegt WELT vor.




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Kurz nach hochrangigem Treffen – Sprecherin von Mike Pence positiv getestet

Die Corona-Erkrankungen im Umfeld des Weißen Hauses häufen sich: Die Sprecherin von Vizepräsident Mike Pence hat sich mit dem Coronavirus infiziert, ebenso ein Assistent von Trumps Tochter Ivanka. Der Präsident gibt sich unbeeindruckt.




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WELT-Sondersendung – Alle Infos und Entwicklungen zur Corona-Krise

Die Coronavirus-Pandemie bestimmt weiterhin das Leben überall auf der Welt. Laut Robert-Koch-Institut liegt die Reproduktionszahl in Deutschland derzeit bei 0,83 – ein leichter Anstieg zu den vergangenen Tagen. Sehen Sie alle Entwicklungen hier live.




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„Er zeigte mit dem Finger auf mich und sagte: ‚Du bist nichts für mich‘“

Erstmals hat sich Tara Reade vor laufender Kamera zu ihren Vorwürfen gegen den demokratischen US-Präsidentschaftsbewerber geäußert. Joe Biden habe sie vor 27 Jahren bedrängt und beschimpft, so die Ex-Mitarbeiterin, die auch einen Lügentest anbot.




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Die Queen erinnert an das Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs

Nicht nur in Deutschland wurde am 8. Mai der Opfer des Zweiten Weltkriegs gedacht. In Großbritannien feierten Menschen Menschen gemeinsam auf den Straßen – und die Queen wandte sich in einer Ansprache an die Bürger.




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Blue Knights Announce 2020 Color Guard Staff

Blue Knights Drum & Bugle Corps is excited to announce the Color Guard Staff for the 2020 season!



  • Blue Knights Drum & Bugle Corps
  • Front

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Blue Knights Cancel 2020 DCI Summer Tour

After several weeks of closely monitoring the situation--in coordination with DCI and other drum corps--the Blue Knights have made the difficult decision to cancel our planning for the 2020 summer national tour.




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Help Blue Knights March On to 2021

With the cancelation of WGI and DCI seasons, Ascend Performing Arts is working diligently to come back stronger in 2021 but need your help. Together we can make it possible for members of the Blue Knights Ensembles to “March On” into 2021.



  • Alumni
  • Blue Knights Drum & Bugle Corps
  • Blue Knights Percussion Ensemble
  • Blue Knights Winds
  • Front
  • 2020
  • I Go On
  • March On

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Alumni Spotlight: Tracy Avila

Meet our Alumni Spotlight for this month: Tracy Avila!




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Alumni Spotlight: Ricky Grasso

What is your name: Ricky Grasso What year(s) did you march in the Blue Knights? 2014: Trumpet, Rookout 2015: Administrative Staff 2016, 2017, 2018: Tour Director Present – Administrative Consultant  What section? Trumpet, then administrative ????  Where did you attend high school? Newtown High School – Sandy Hook, CT Education beyond high school? University of Bridgeport (Bridgeport, CT) B.A. Mass Communications, concentration:




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Short on Cash? Here's Some Advice For Families Stretching Their Budgets

Updated on April 13 at 5:06 p.m. ET Forget living paycheck to paycheck. Many families have lost work during the pandemic and are running out of cash as they wait for unemployment checks and government rescue money to arrive. These are highly unusual times, and family budgeting recommendations are also unconventional. Kathy Hauer, a financial planner based in Aiken, S.C., says she's telling people to do things she has never recommended before: "Defer as many payments as possible and worry about it later." But, she says, don't just ignore all the bills. Make sure to call all the companies and ask for forbearance — either a delayed payment or a new payment plan. This is an especially hard time for lower-income families who don't have a lot of wiggle room in their budgets, Hauer says. They may not be able to borrow money from other family members. If they have bad credit, they can't qualify for personal loans from banks. Many also don't have credit cards or are close to maxing those out.




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Unicorn Riding Scooter In Fatal Crash

Editor's note: This is an excerpt of Planet Money 's newsletter. You can sign up here . A majestic unicorn Pixabay In late March, the scooter-sharing company Bird invited about a third of its employees to attend a thirty-minute "COVID-19 update" via Zoom. The meeting only lasted about two minutes, and it wasn't really an update. With what one employee later described as a "robotic-sounding, disembodied voice," an executive told the 406 employees they were fired. "It felt like a Black Mirror episode," the employee said . (Bird later issued an apologetic statement, saying the employees got severance pay and extended health insurance. Their CEO's salary is also supposed to get cut to zero). The Bird layoffs are part of a widespread collapse in the startup world right now. Billions in investment dollars are drying up. Companies are going bankrupt. Thousands of workers are losing their jobs. Martin Pichinson, a Silicon Valley veteran, says the downturn caused by the coronavirus is




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Unemployment Money Not Reaching Millions Of People Who Applied

About 17 million people have applied for unemployment benefits in the U.S. in recent weeks. It's an astonishing number that's nearly 10 times what the system has ever handled so quickly. But, by one estimate , that money is still not flowing to about half of those people who desperately need it. And others are only getting a trickle of what they should be receiving. Many people have been out of a job for a month now. That's a long time to be without your income in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. "It's really intense and it's really frightening," says Nicolena Loshonkohl, a hair stylist NPR has been checking in with in Roanoke, Va. She's a single mom with a 2-year-old daughter. As a regular employee at a local salon, she says it was pretty easy to file for unemployment online. And she's now started to get payments. Loshonkohl feels fortunate about that. But so far, she's only receiving $340 a week. And that doesn't cover her rent, health insurance, food and other basic costs of




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10 Years Of Spectacular U.S. Job Growth Nearly Wiped Out In 4 Weeks

Updated at 8:43 a.m. ET The number of people filing for unemployment climbed by another 5.2 million last week as the toll of the nation's economic dive amid the pandemic continues to mount. That number is down from the revised 6.6 million in the week that ended April 4, the Labor Department said . But in the past four weeks, a total of 22 million have filed jobless claims — nearly wiping out all the job gains since the Great Recession. The dramatic reversal followed a decade of spectacular growth in jobs that brought the unemployment rate to near 50-year lows along with record low jobless rates for blacks and Hispanics. Now the job market is on its knees. Don't see the graphic above? Click here. The unemployment rate is expected to surge in coming months , with many full-time workers pushed into part-time jobs or not working at all. The economy lost about 700,000 jobs in March — ending 113 straight months of increases. And overall job losses are likely to be 10 to 20 times that big in




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Bitter Taste For Coffee Shop Owner, As New $600 Jobless Benefit Drove Her To Close

Updated at 4:04 p.m. ET $600 per week. That's what the federal government is now offering to people who've lost their jobs because of the coronavirus. For many workers and employers, that money is a godsend — a way to keep food on the table while also cutting payroll costs. But the extra money can create some awkward situations. Some businesses that want to keep their doors open say it's hard to do so when employees can make more money by staying home. "We basically have this situation where it would be a logical choice for a lot of people to be unemployed," said Sky Marietta, who opened a coffee shop along with her husband, Geoff, last year in Harlan, Ky. Their goal was to provide good coffee, good Internet service and some opportunity in a community that has been starved of all three. "We're very committed to helping to transform the downtowns and main streets in eastern Kentucky," Marietta said. When the couple advertised for workers, nearly 100 people applied for just a handful of




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Why Is The Fed Sending Billions Of Dollars All Over The World?

Editor's note: This is an excerpt of Planet Money 's newsletter. You can sign up here . US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP via Getty Images As the global economy shuts down, the U.S. Federal Reserve has begun sending billions of dollars to central banks all over the world. Last month, it opened up 14 " swap lines " to nations such as Australia, Japan, Mexico, and Norway. A "swap line" is like an emergency pipeline of dollars to countries that need them. The dollars are "swapped," i.e., traded for the other country's currency. The Fed has also started allowing around 170 foreign central banks that hold U.S. Treasury bonds to temporarily exchange them for dollars. Sending billions of dollars abroad in the middle of a historic economic crisis might seem crazy: As America's economy crumbles, why are we moving our precious dollars *out* of the country? The answer has to do with the Fed's unique position in the global economy. Dollars are the lynchpin




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Europe's Economy Was Hit Hard Too, But Jobs Didn't Disappear Like In The U.S.

When the British economy ground to a halt a few weeks ago, Reda Maher suddenly found himself among the ranks of the unemployed, alongside untold millions of other people around the world. But unlike many others, Maher can rest easy, knowing that money will keep flowing into his bank account until he's called back to work. "I woke up a couple of hours later than I normally would. I won't lie," Maher said one afternoon earlier this month. "I took a nice long masked and gloved walk. I've got a remote personal training like fitness session in about 20 minutes." The United Kingdom recently began paying 80% of the salaries of workers laid off because of the coronavirus pandemic. The government caps the pay at about $3,000 a month, but many employers, including the London-based video streaming service where Maher works, add to what the government hands out. Maher also doesn't need to worry about being left without health care coverage, thanks to Britain's National Health Service. Across




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Deluge Continues: 26 Million Jobs Lost In Just 5 Weeks

Updated at 8:46 a.m. ET The number of people forced out of work during the coronavirus lockdown continues to soar to historic highs. Another 4.4 million people claimed unemployment benefits last week around the country, the Labor Department said . That brings the total of jobless claims in just five weeks to more than 26 million people. That's more than all the jobs added in the past 10 years since the Great Recession. Still, the pace of job losses is slowing. About 5.2 million filed during the week that ended April 11 and last week was the third consecutive week of declines. Don't see the graphic above? Click here. The coronavirus crisis has suddenly ended a decade of remarkable job growth. The unemployment rate, which sank to nearly 50-year lows, is expected to soar into double digits. The pace of job losses has the broader population worried. A Gallup poll found that a quarter of working Americans believe they will lose their jobs in the next 12 months. That's a record high. The




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School Bus Driver: I Lost My Job Over The Dispatch Radio

Angelita Wynn has driven a school bus for six years. Wynn was driving the kids back home on her afternoon run in Pittsburgh one day in March when she got word her job was going away. Over the radio. "Our dispatcher came across the radio saying that school was closed, so that's how I found out," Wynn said. "And that's the last time I've been in the bus." Her favorite thing about her job was the sense of freedom it offered, where driving can get you from one place to another. Her least favorite thing: It didn't pay a living wage. Wynn notes that most school bus drivers are retired or married to someone who brings in another income. "If you don't fit in those categories it can be a struggle," she said. She typically collects unemployment during the summer when school is not in session. But the abrupt layoff this spring and a weeks-long delay in getting her jobless benefits has thrown her for a loop. "My bank account is in the negative," Wynn said. "I've had to rely on savings that will




world news

A Trombonist Wonders When An Audience Will Gather To Hear Music

"You can't really have a concert if you can't have an audience," David Roode muses. His career as a concert trombonist in Cincinnati went abruptly on hold when stay-at-home orders took effect in March. "I had months of gigs that were just canceled." Roode and his wife, a concert pianist, have done some recording while on lockdown in Cincinnati. And they've tapped into savings they typically rely on during the slower summer months. "If I kind of burn through my summer money now, then when the summer comes and there's no work, there might be more of a problem," Roode says. He's done some soul-searching about the role of a musician during a pandemic. "The medical professionals are the ones who are on the front lines who are really making a difference," Roode says. But he thinks artists and performers will eventually be in demand again. "I really think when this is all over, people are going to want to go hear concerts and they're going to want to have that experience." Read more stories




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Set Builder: 'It's New York City ... Eventually, Events Have to Come Back'

Maxwell Kirsner used to build sets for a company that staged big events in New York City. Those events dried up suddenly in mid-March. "I was laid off on Friday the 13th," he recalls. The timing actually turned out to be fortunate, as Kirsner was able to apply for and start receiving jobless benefits before the huge wave of layoffs that soon followed, overwhelming unemployment offices. His fiancée, Natalie Borowicz, and others who worked for the same company got pink slips a few weeks later. When we spoke, some were still waiting for their benefits to begin. "They're struggling to pay rent and buy food and all that," Kirsner said. "We're all in the same boat, but we're all on different seats on that boat." He's grateful that his bosses and coworkers continue to check in on one another regularly, and he hopes to return to work someday. "The light at the end of the tunnel is that it's New York City, and eventually, events have to come back," he said. "So, part of me has faith, but part




world news

Why Remote Work Sucks, According To Science

Editor's note: This is an excerpt of Planet Money 's newsletter. You can sign up here . The Planet Money team on GoToMeeting with a goat (Listen to our recent episode, " Making It Work ") Planet Money Like a decent chunk of the American workforce, Planet Money is now working remotely. Every morning, we have an all-staff video conference on GoToMeeting. We use Slack for conversations. We record in closets and use Dropbox to transfer the files. We're making the best of it — we're happy to have the work — but no one really loves it. Since the birth of the personal computer, futurists have been predicting the death of the office. If we can chat over video and instantly exchange messages and files, they figured, why would we endure stressful commutes in fossil-fuel-burning vehicles just to sit side by side in brick-and-mortar buildings? I mean, we're mostly staring at screens there anyway. But the office has proven more stubbornly useful than we had imagined. Between 2005 and 2015, despite




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As Governors Urge Businesses To Reopen, Workers May Be Pushed Off Unemployment

There's a call Laura Jean Truman is dreading, and she's convinced it's just a matter of time before it comes. Truman, who's a server at Manuel's Tavern in Atlanta, says the source of her angst is the fear that sometime in the next few weeks her boss is going to call and say it's time to go back to work, putting her in the position of having to make a choice between her safety and being able to pay the bills that continue to arrive despite the coronavirus. "Right now, everyone who is not working at restaurants is able to be on unemployment," she told NPR. "But once restaurants decide to open, and if we decide that we don't feel safe going back into those restaurants, we then are no longer eligible for unemployment because then we have a job opportunity that we're turning down," Truman explained. "It's a tremendously scary thing to have to think about," she said. The predicament is one in which millions of people receiving state unemployment benefits along with federal dollars from the




world news

A Staggering Toll: 30 Million Have Filed For Unemployment

Updated at 8:38 a.m. ET The telephone lines are still jammed at the nation's unemployment offices. Another 3.8 million people filed claims for jobless benefits last week, according to the Labor Department . While that's down from the previous week's 4.4 million, a staggering 30.3 million have applied for unemployment in the six weeks since the coronavirus began taking a wrecking ball to the U.S. job market. That's roughly one out of five people who had a job in February. The pandemic has cut a wide swath of destruction through the economy, as restaurants, retailers and businesses of all kinds closed their doors in an effort to slow the spread of the virus. Don't see the graphic above? Click here. An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found half the people surveyed had either lost a job or had their hours reduced because of the pandemic and the aggressive public health measures to contain it. The sudden job losses are all the more striking after a long period of record low unemployment, in




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Optimizing Your Pandemic Charity




world news

20.2 Million Private-Sector Jobs Are Gone

The private sector slashed a record 20.2 million jobs between March and April — a somber preview of Friday's monthly jobs report. That's up from the 149,000 private jobs cut a month earlier. The ADP National Employment Report released Wednesday was not surprising, given that more than 30 million people have filed for unemployment benefits as the coronavirus pandemic shut down much of the economy. But the latest numbers are stunning nonetheless. "Job losses of this scale are unprecedented," said Ahu Yildirmaz, co-head of the ADP Research Institute. "The total number of job losses for the month of April alone was more than double the total jobs lost during the Great Recession." Small businesses cut 6 million jobs, medium businesses 5.3 million and large businesses nearly 9 million, ADP said. The service sector cut 16 million jobs — including 8.6 million in leisure and hospitality. Manufacturing jobs fell by 4.3 million. The Labor Department's official report for April, which also




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3.2 Million More Are Out Of Work As Jobless Claims Keep Piling Up

Updated at 8:43 a.m. ET Another 3.2 million people filed for unemployment for the first time last week, bringing the total number of jobs lost during the coronavirus crisis in the last seven weeks to at least 33.5 million. Last week's number was down from the nearly 3.9 million initial claims filed the week ending April 25, and filings have fallen for five weeks in a row. The claims numbers come one day before the release of the April jobs report, which is expected to show a staggering jump in unemployment to around 16%. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that unemployment, which hit 4.4% in March, will average nearly 14% during April, May and June. Moody's Investors Service predicts it will rise to 15% during the quarter. The real unemployment rate is probably higher, says Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. "I think we are not near the peak yet," she says. "I think we are still going to see additional job losses show up in the data for May,




world news

Friday's Jobs Numbers Will Be Brutal But Won't Tell The Whole Story

The Labor Department is expected to deliver a historically bad employment report Friday, showing millions of jobs lost last month as the jobless rate soared to around 16% — the highest level since the Great Depression. Unemployment inched up to 4.4% in March as the coronavirus began to take hold in the United States. It approached 25% during the Great Depression and remained elevated until World War II. As painful as the report for April will be, it won't tell the full story of the economic wreckage left by the coronavirus and the government's drastic efforts to control it. The report is based on surveys conducted in the middle of April, and claims for jobless benefits suggest that millions of additional jobs have been lost since then. What's more, the headline unemployment figure includes only people who are actively looking for work and those on temporary furlough, ignoring millions more who have been involuntarily idled by the pandemic. Even with those limitations, the April




world news

One For The History Books: 14.7% Unemployment, 20.5 Million Jobs Wiped Away

Updated at 11:43 a.m. ET The Labor Department delivered a historically bad employment report Friday, showing 20.5 million jobs lost last month as the nation locked down against the coronavirus. The jobless rate soared to 14.7% — the highest level since the Great Depression. The highest monthly job loss before this was 2 million in 1945, as the nation began to demobilize after World War II. The worst monthly job loss during the Great Recession was 800,000 in March 2009. Loading... Don't see the graphic above? Click here. Unemployment was 4.4% in March as the coronavirus began to take hold in the U.S. It approached 25% during the Great Depression and remained elevated until World War II. Loading... Don't see the graphic above? Click here. The carnage was felt across industries in April. With most travel shut down, leisure and hospitality jobs fell by 7.6 million. The retail and health care sectors each dropped by 2.1 million. Manufacturing lost 1.3 million and government jobs fell by 980




world news

Women Bear The Brunt Of Coronavirus Job Losses

Very briefly, at the end of 2019 and the start of 2020, there were slightly more women on American nonfarm payrolls than men. That's no longer true. The historically disastrous April jobs report shows that the brunt of job losses fell on women. Women now account for around just under half — 49% — of American workers, and they accounted for 55% of the increase in job losses last month. One way of looking at why that matters that is to look at the gap that opened up between women's and men's unemployment last month. The below chart shows women's unemployment rate minus men's unemployment rate since 2007. Usually, the line bumps around near or just below zero — meaning men's unemployment is usually near or slightly higher than women's. But that spike on the far right shows how women's unemployment leapt to be 2.7 points higher than men's in April. Women had an unemployment rate of 16.2% to men's 13.5% last month. That's uncommon for a recession. The below chart is a longer view, and the




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For Prominent Women Discrimination Often Doesn't Stop At The Grave

Today on “Two Way Street” we’re discussing The New York Times obituary project “ Overlooked ” with its co-creator Jessica Bennett . From Ida B. Wells to Emily Warren Roebling , “Overlooked” features the retroactive obituaries of prominent women whose stories initially failed to make it into the Times obit section. Jessica, the Times’ newly appointed gender editor, joins us to discuss her work on “Overlooked” with the digital editor of the obituary desk Amisha Padnani . And since no conversation about obituary writing is complete here in Georgia without including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s longtime obit editor, we asked Kay Powell to join us, too. Kay served as obituary editor of the AJC from 1996 to 2009. “Overlooked” began after an exhaustive search of the Times’ obituary archives struck Jessica and Amisha with this epiphany: white men had historically dominated the newspaper’s obituaries. The two editors responded by writing obituaries for some of the women who had been




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Platinum-Selling Songwriter Jimmy Webb On The Stories Behind His Biggest Hits

Platinum-selling songwriter Jimmy Webb stopped by our studio last October to talk about his first memoir, " The Cake And The Rain ." Artists from Frank Sinatra to Barbara Streisand have recorded Webb's songs. Some of his hits include “Up, Up and Away,” “Wichita Lineman,” “MacArthur Park,” and “By The Time I Get to Phoenix.” Our conversation begins with a discussion of his childhood in rural Elk City, Oklahoma. He explains how his mother’s “iron will and sometimes anger” drove him to the piano. Plus, Webb talks about the time he was out plowing a field when a voice on the radio captivated him. It belonged to Glen Campbell , who became a close collaborator of Webb’s. He reveals the story behind his celebrated classic "By The Time I Get To Phoenix," for which Campbell won two Grammy awards. Webb also talks about his hit "Wichita Lineman," another song that Campbell recorded. Once, at the Songwriters Hall of Fame , Billy Joel described “Wichita Lineman” as being “emblematic of an ordinary




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Four Smart, Well-Read Georgians Discuss Their Favorite Books

On this edition of "Two Way Street," we sit down with four smart, well read Georgians to discuss their favorite books. This conversation picks up the discussion started by " The Great American Read ," an eight-part PBS series that unpacks a diverse list of 100 books. "The Great American Read" premieres Tuesday May 22 at 8 PM on GPB. Our guests today are Oglethorpe Unvirersity Creative Writing Professor Jessica Handler , Bitter Southerner Editor in Chief Chuck Reece , Altanta International School Headmaster Kevin Glass, and On Second Thought's new host Virigina Prescott .




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The Man, The Myths And The Music Of 'Hamilton'

Today we're talking about one of the biggest sensations in the history of American theatre: "Hamilton: An American Musical." Composer, lyrisict, and preformer Lin-Manuel Miranda was inspired to create "Hamilton" after reading Ron Chernow's 800-page biography of Alexander Hamilton. Fans of the mega-hit "Hamilton" have waited impatiently for a chance to see the show here in Georgia—and now that opportunity has arrived . The Tony-winning musical is now at the Fox Theatre through June 11. Our guests today are David Sehat , an Associate Professor of American History at Georgia State University, and Rick Lombardo , a seasoned theatrical director who is now the chairman of the Kennesaw State University theater department. Sehat tells us about Alexander Hamilton’s place in history and weighs the musical’s accuracy. Plus, Lombardo and Sehat discuss Miranda's decision to cast actors of color in roles as Founding Fathers. This is a music-packed coversation about the man, the myths, and the music




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Ramadan: Your Questions Answered

Right now Muslims around the world are observing Ramadan, the holiest period on the Islamic calendar. What is Ramadan and what is the history behind it? What compels Muslims everywhere to devote themselves to an entire month of fasting and prayer? Soumaya Khalifa , one of Georgia's most influential Muslim leaders, joins us to answer those questions and more. Khalifa is the Executive Director of the Islamic Speakers Bureau of Atlanta.




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The Search For Atticus Finch's Origin Story

Who is Atticus Finch really—an arch-segregationist or a champion of justice? And how do we go about answering that question when going straight to the source isn’t an option?




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Reconstructing A Final Chapter Of The American Slave Trade

Savannah businessman Charles Lamar on Nov. 28, 1858, became the first person in 40 years to land a slave ship on American soil. That event is the subject of Jim Jordan’s new book, “ The Slave-Trader’s Letter-Book: Charles Lamer, the Wanderer, and other Tales of the African Slave Trade .” Jordan was able to reconstruct the story because he got his hands on valuable research material — Charles Lamar’s own letters, which most historians didn’t even believe existed.




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The Life and Music of Savannah-Born Songwriter Johnny Mercer

Johnny Mercer grew up in Savannah and went on to write some of the most popular love songs of the 20th century. You may not know his name, but you certainly know his music, which includes "Something’s Gotta Give," "Moon River," and "Autumn Leaves." Between 1929 and 1976, Mercer wrote the lyrics—and in some cases the music too—to some 1,400 songs. We explore the life and music of Johnny Mercer with Georgia State University archivist Kevin Fleming . Georgia State is the repository for Johnny Mercer’s papers as well as a vast collection of other materials related to his life and career.




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Former CNN President Tom Johnson On A Lifetime In Journalism

On this edition of “Two Way Street,” Tom Johnson shares stories about his life and career in journalism. We’re revisiting this conversation — and other favorites — as part of our “Two Way Street” anniversary celebration. To kick off our fifth year, we’re listening again to the shows that we can’t let go: the conversations that challenged us, surprised us and have stuck with us all these years. This show originally aired on January 14, 2017.




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Diana Nyad: The Woman Who Swam From Cuba to Florida at Age 64

July fifth 2018 marks the fourth anniversary of "Two Way Street." To celebrate that milestone, we're revisiting one of our favorite conversations: an interview with Diana Nyad, the strong-willed swimmer who was the first to swim from Cuba to Florida without a protective shark cage. She completed the feat, which many thought was impossible, at the remarkable age of 66.




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Delving Into The Life And Work Of Carson McCullers

We are continuing our look back on some of our favorite shows from the first four years of Two-Way Street. In February 2017, we produced a show about the life of one of Georgia’s literary lions: Columbus-born Carson McCullers.