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Five-year INDECOM Act inertia - Williams, Golding still want prosecutorial powers for commission; DPP, Chuck, cops not sold on idea

Almost five years ago, lawmakers on a bipartisan committee of Parliament agreed unanimously to amend the law to give the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) the power to arrest and prosecute cops. That proposed amendment, which was...




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Changing Demography and Circumstances for Young Black Children in African and Caribbean Immigrant Families

This report finds that the 813,000 U.S. children under the age of 10 who have Black immigrant parents from Africa or the Caribbean generally fall in the middle of multiple well-being indicators, faring less well than Asian and white children but better than their native-born Black and Hispanic peers. Citizenship status, English proficiency, parental characteristics, poverty, housing, and access to social supports are examined.




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A Demographic Profile of Black Caribbean Immigrants in the United States

Immigration from the Caribbean to the United States is a relatively recent phenomenon, beginning largely after 1965. This report provides a demographic profile of the 1.7 million Caribbean immigrants in the United States: their geographic settlement, education and workforce characteristics, earnings, modes of entry, and more.




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Black and Immigrant: Exploring the Effects of Ethnicity and Foreign-Born Status on Infant Health

This report analyzes prenatal behaviors and birth outcomes of Black immigrant mothers, and finds that Black immigrant mothers are less likely to give birth to preterm or low-birth-weight infants than U.S.-born Black women, but more likely to experience these birth outcomes than other immigrant and U.S.-born women.




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Parenting Behavior, Health, and Cognitive Development among Children in Black Immigrant Families: Comparing the United States and the United Kingdom

This report focuses on the development of children of Black immigrants in the United States, comparing against the outcomes for their peers in native-born and other immigrant families. It also compares these U.S. children to those in the United Kingdom, where there is a large Black immigrant population but a notably different policy context of reception.




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Black Immigrant Mothers in Palm Beach County, Florida, and their Children's Readiness for School

This report draws on a six-year longitudinal study of Palm Beach County, FL, examining parenting, child care enrollment, and other factors that encourage early school success. The authors find kindergarten-age children of Black immigrants have significantly higher odds of being ready for school than children of Latina immigrant or Black U.S.-born mothers.




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Patterns and Predictors of School Readiness and Early Childhood Success among Young Children in Black Immigrant Families

Using a nationally representative U.S. birth-cohort study, this report examines levels of school readiness among young children by race/ethnicity and nativity. The authors identify the contextual factors — such as family circumstances, parenting practices, and enrollment in center-based child care — that encourage early school success.




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Young Children of Black Immigrants in America: Changing Flows, Changing Faces

The event discussion, which touched on the intersection of race and immigration, focused on the demographics of Black immigrants (both African and Caribbean) in the United States and their children, their educational success, and the implications of the recently released volume’s findings for research and public policy.




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Young Children of Black Immigrants in America: Changing Flows, Changing Faces

Book release event for MPI's volume on the Children of Black Immigrants, covering topics of education, health, and demographics, with U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Deputy Assistant Secretary for Human Services Policy Ajay Chaudry; Gerald D. Jaynes, Yale University Departments of Economics and African-American Studies; chapter authors Dylan Patricia Conger and Kevin Thomas; and volume editors MPI's Randy Capps and Michael Fix.




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JACRA reluctant to offer more fee concessions

Recent calls by the Jamaica Manufacturing and Exporters Association, JMEA, for more targeted concessions on raw materials that are processed for re-export sent Jamaica Agricultural Commodities Regulatory Authority, JACRA, back to the drawing board...




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Arbery’s death raises echoes of US racial terror legacy

(AP): Many people saw more than the last moments of Ahmaud Arbery’s life when a video emerged this week of white men armed with guns confronting the black man; a struggle with punches thrown; three shots fired and Arbery collapsing...




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Teachers will need psycho-social support post COVID-19

Education officials across the Caribbean and Latin America have asserted that teachers will be in need of psycho-social support for their return to the classroom, following the COVID-19 pandemic. Approximately 91,710 teachers and seven million...




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Immigrants and Welfare: The Impact of Welfare Reform on America's Newcomers

This edited volume rigorously assesses the 1996 U.S. welfare reform law, questions whether its immigrant provisions were ever really necessary, and examines its impact on legal immigrants’ ability to integrate into American society.




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Hoja de ruta para la participación de las diásporas en el desarrollo: Un manual para políticos y profesionales de los países de origen y de acogida

Este manual ofrece a los formuladores de políticas y especialistas una guía accesible y práctica sobre las iniciativas gubernamentales referentes a la diáspora. Este manual contiene un menú, seleccionado cuidadosamente, de opciones normativas y programáticas viables basadas en experiencias reales en distintas partes del mundo.




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Comment associer les diasporas au développement: Manuel a l’usage des decideurs et praticiens dans les pays d’origine et d’accueil

Ce manuel pratique et simple d’utilisation à l’usage des décideurs et des praticiens fait le point des mesures les plus récentes prises par les pouvoirs publics en direction des diasporas. La question qui se pose aux responsables politiques n’est pas tant de savoir si les diasporas peuvent être utiles à leur pays d’origine, mais comment elles le sont et quels types de politiques et de programmes publics sont à même de favoriser ces relations.




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Developing a Road Map for Engaging Diasporas in Development: A Handbook for Policymakers and Practitioners in Home and Host Countries

This practical handbook highlights policies and programs that can magnify the resources, both human and financial, that emigrants and their descendants contribute to development. It gives concrete examples of policies and programs that have been effective, and pulls out both useful lessons and common challenges associated with the topics at hand.




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Young Children of Black Immigrants in America: Changing Flows, Changing Faces

This interdisciplinary volume examines the health, well-being, school readiness, and academic achievement of children in Black immigrant families (most with parents from Africa and the Caribbean)—a population that has had little academic attention even as it represents an increasing share of the U.S. Black child population.




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Migration of Health Workers: The WHO Code of Practice and the Global Economic Crisis

This edited volume from the World Health Organization (WHO), which includes chapters written by MPI researchers, examines country-level responses to the international movement of health-care workers, both before and after adoption of the WHO’s Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel.




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The County-Level View of Unauthorized Immigrants and Implications for Executive Action Implementation

A webinar showcasing MPI's profiles of unauthorized immigrants in the 94 U.S. counties with the largest populations potentially eligible for DACA or DAPA, and the implications of the data for implementation of the DACA and DAPA programs.




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Is This Working? Assessment and Evaluation Methods Used to Build and Access Language Services in Social Services Agencies In Social Services Agencies

The enactment of President Clinton’s Limited English Proficiency (LEP) Executive Order, issued in 2000, triggered a proliferation of efforts to provide services to individuals who cannot speak, understand, read, or write English fluently. With increased service provision, state and local government agencies have expressed a strong and growing interest in assuring the quality and cost-effectiveness of language access services. This paper attempts to catalog and describe some of those tools and practices.




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Proactive Engagement: Two Strategies for Providing Language Access in Workforce Development Services

This interactive language access webinar, one in a series offered by the Migration Policy Institute's National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy, examines how New York and Illinois have broken down some of these barriers to proactively engage LEP communities to obtain workforce services.




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Proactive Engagement: Two Strategies for Providing Language Access in Workforce Development Services

This webinar examines how New York and Illinois have proactively engaged Limited English Proficient (LEP) communities to obtain workforce services.




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LEP Workers & Access to Workforce Services: Perspectives on Current Barriers to Access and Prospects for Improvements Under WIA Reauthorization

In this webinar, experts discuss barriers immigrant and LEP individuals face in accessing the WIA system, how a revitalized WIA could address these barriers, and the extent to which the current Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee's WIA reauthorization proposal addresses these barriers.




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Language Access and Schools: Federal Requirements and School Experiences

This is the latest in NCIIP’s language access webinar series exploring the policy and program implementation imperatives for government and community agencies serving Limited English Proficient (LEP) populations.




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Language Access and Schools: Federal Requirements and School Experiences

This webinar from the MPI’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Bridging Refugee Youth & Children’s Services program explores federal requirements for providing interpretation and translation in schools and how select school districts in Minnesota and Colorado have managed these requirements.




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Federal Update: A Conversation on Language Access with the U.S. Department of Justice

This MPI webinar features U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) officials discussing the department’s efforts to improve communications with Limited English Proficient (LEP) communities in federal and federally-funded programs and activities.




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Federal Update: A Conversation on Language Access with the U.S. Department of Justice

This MPI webinar features U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) officials discussing the department’s efforts to improve communications with Limited English Proficient (LEP) communities in federal and federally-funded programs and activities.




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Making It Work: Lessons in Collaboration on Language Access Contracting

A webinar on language access contracting for federal, state, and local officials, agency administrators, and community stakeholders concerned with the oversight and implementation of language access provision.




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Making It Work: Lessons in Collaboration on Language Access Contracting

A webinar on language access contracting for federal, state, and local officials, agency administrators, and community stakeholders concerned with the oversight and implementation of language access provision.




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The Impact of Immigrants in Recession and Economic Expansion

A broad consensus exists that the long-term impact of immigration on Americans' average income is small but positive, improving employment, productivity, and income. In the short term, however, immigration may slightly reduce native employment and average income. This report provides an analysis of short- and long-run impacts of immigration over the business cycle.




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Gut bacteria regulate nerve fibre insulation

Research suggests that gut bacteria may directly affect brain structure and function, offering new ways to treat multiple sclerosis and psychiatric conditions

Far from being silent partners that merely help to digest food, the bacteria in your gut may also be exerting subtle influences on your thoughts, moods, and behaviour. And according to a new study from researchers at University College Cork, your gut microbes might affect the structure and function of the brain in a more direct way, by regulating myelination, the process by which nerve fibres are insulated so that they can conduct impulses properly.

The surprising new findings, published today in the journal Translational Psychiatry, provide what is perhaps the strongest evidence yet that gut bacteria can have a direct physical effect on the brain, and suggest that it may one day be possible to treat debilitating demyelinating diseases such as multiple sclerosis, and even psychiatric disorders, by altering the composition of the gut’s microbial menagerie in some way or another.

Related: Brain’s immune cells hyperactive in schizophrenia

Related: White matter might matter much more than we thought | Mo Costandi

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Birds pack more cells into their brains than mammals

New research reveals the secret behind the remarkable intelligence of some bird species

Related: Blind cave fish evolved a shrunken brain to save energy

Calling someone “bird brain” used to be considered as an insult. Birds’ brains are very small compared to those of mammals, and what’s more, they lack the heavily wrinkled cerebral cortex, which is characteristic of the human brain, and widely believed to the seat of intelligence. It was, therefore, widely assumed that birds aren’t very clever creatures, but recently this has started to change.

Related: Ravens cooperate with friends not foes

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Barack Obama Blindness: Failing to see the unexpected

New research demonstrates an extreme form of inattentional blindness in which we fail to see the unexpected

There’s much more to visual perception than meets the eye. What we see is not merely a matter of patterns of light falling on the retina, but rather is heavily influenced by so-called ‘top-down’ brain mechanisms, which can alter the visual information, and other types of sensory information, that enters the brain before it even reaches our conscious awareness.

Related: Memory contaminates perception | Mo Costandi

Related: Language boosts invisible objects into visual awareness | Mo Costandi

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Breathing modulates brain activity and mental function

New research shows that the rhythm of breathing directly impacts neural activity in a network of brain areas involved in smell, memory and emotions

The rhythm of breathing co-ordinates electrical activity across a network of brain regions associated with smell, memory, and emotions, and can enhance their functioning, according to a new study by researchers at Northwestern University. The findings, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, suggest that breathing does not merely supply oxygen to the brain and body, but may also organise the activity of populations of cells within multiple brain regions to help orchestrate complex behaviours.

Related: Your nose knows death is imminent | Mo Costandi

Related: A cooler way to evaluate brain surgery patients

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Face-selective brain region continues to grow in adulthood

New findings challenge our understanding of how the brain matures

Faces are important to us. From the moment we are are born, we prefer to look at faces than at other, inanimate objects, and, being social animals, we encounter faces every day of our lives. The face is the first thing we look to when identifying other people; faces also convey emotions, informing us of peoples’ mood, and from them we can usually determine a person’s sex and, sometimes, roughly how old they are. Eye movements can also reveal to us something about another person’s intentions.

Related: How your eyes betray your thoughts

Related: Live imaging of synapse density in the human brain

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[ Other - Games & Recreation ] Open Question : A dnd session where the party killed a manticore and decided to bring the corpse back to town to sell. How much money should this give them?




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[ Polls & Surveys ] Open Question : Do you think Beyoncé should go back to the kitchen?

Or better yet go back to Africa, we don’t need any feminazis ruining our society




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[ Politics ] Open Question : Should Gregory and Travis McMichael be freed and given a medal of honor for their heroic actions of taking a dangerous thug of the streets?




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[ Politics ] Open Question : Should President Trump continue to have manufacturing sent to China???




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[ Polls & Surveys ] Open Question : What happens if you go to a concert just to stand in the corner and stink the place up with your farts?




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[ Polls & Surveys ] Open Question : True/False: Your bank account is healing - turns out you're the virus all along?

????




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Moving Up or Standing Still? Access to Middle-Skilled Work for Newly Arrived Migrants in the European Union

The global economic crisis and changing migration patterns in Europe bring up questions about how well immigrants are able to find employment and progress into better jobs over time. This overview report caps a series of six country case studies evaluating the employment outcomes for foreign-born workers during their first decade in the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.




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Better Work for Immigrants: Tackling Joblessness and Stunted Progression in the European Union

This day-long conference in Brussels, co-sponsored by the International Labour Office and the European Commision’s Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs, and Inclusion, focuses on the dynamics by which migrants get stuck in low-skilled work, and the role of training and employment services in helping them progress in their occupations.




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Better Work for Immigrants: Tackling Joblessness and Stunted Progression in the European Union

A day-long conference in Brussels, co-sponsored by the International Labour Office and the European Commision’s Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs, and Inclusion, where panelists discuss the dynamics by which migrants get stuck in low-skilled work, and the role of training and employment services in helping them progress in their occupations. The conference concludes a project and series of reports prepared on the Labor Market Integration of New Arrivals in Europe




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Executive Action on Immigration: Six Ways to Make the System Work Better

In the absence of new U.S. immigration reform legislation, this report examines the opportunities that exist within the executive branch and the administration to refine and strengthen current U.S. immigration laws and policies. The administration can exercise its authority to field policies, programs, and procedures that are effective and fair in advancing the goals of the U.S. immigration system. 




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Adult Education, English and Skills Training: Opportunities for Action and Investment in the Most Vital Integration Services

Part of a series exploring issues likely to be addressed by the new National Integration Plan, this webinar, with perspectives from MPI, the National Partnership for New Americans, and the National Skills Coalition, looks at the role of adult education and English language and skills training in the immigrant integration process.




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Cross-Cutting Needs and Opportunities: Language Access, Funding, Multi-Level Partnerships, and Planning for the Long Term

Part of a series exploring issues likely to be addressed by the new National Integration Plan, this webinar, with perspectives from the cities of New York and Seattle and others delves into possible recommendations on federal coordination of local government immigrant integration initiatives, including language access. 




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Adult Education, English and Skills Training: Opportunities for Action and Investment in the Most Vital Integration Services

This webinar, with perspectives from MPI, the National Partnership for New Americans, and the National Skills Coalition, looks at the role of adult education and English language and skills training in the immigrant integration process.




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Cross-Cutting Needs and Opportunities: Language Access, Funding, Multi-Level Partnerships, and Planning for the Long Term

Part of a series exploring issues likely to be addressed by the new National Integration Plan, this webinar, with perspectives from the cities of New York and Seattle and others examines possible recommendations on federal coordination of local government immigrant integration initiatives, including language access. 




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It is Time for Federal Agencies to Do More to Improve the Provision of Language Access Services

Whether driven by pragmatism, local laws, or federal civil-rights provisions, state and local governments and agencies across the United States increasingly have designed and implemented language access services (i.e. translation and interpretation) in response to growing Limited English Proficient populations. This commentary argues it is time for the federal government to follow suit.