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Florida is considering a bill that would ban houseless people from sleeping in public places and instead require them to stay in designated encampments, Alexandra Martinez of Prism reported on February 24, 2024. The bill has received support from Governor Ron DeSantis and is moving through the legislative process. Critics argue that the bill is discriminatory and dehumanizing, targeting marginalized groups and effectively segregating them from urban areas. They suggest that a better approach would be to prioritize providing housing for houseless individuals to address their most basic needs.

David Peery, a formerly houseless activist and the founder of Miami Coalition to Advance Racial Equity, and other advocates for the houseless have been calling for a housing-first approach that would prioritize “providing housing for people so that their most basic needs can be addressed,” Martinez wrote. Perry and other advocates have criticized conservative think tanks, such as the Cicero Institute, for promoting legislation that further criminalizes houselessness and effectively hides the issue from public view.

“These efforts have been spearheaded by very conservative think tanks, very conservative people that simply want to relegate the poor into the areas where they cannot see them,” Peery said. “They certainly want to use and exploit the poor for their labor in order to produce their wealth that they can use, but they don’t want to see them.”
Legal precedents, such as the Martin v. Boise case, have recognized the rights of houseless individuals to sleep on public property when no other options are available.

However, upcoming Supreme Court decisions could change this, potentially impacting the legality of Florida’s proposed measures and similar laws nationwide. Despite criticism and legal complexities, the bill continues to advance.

Governor DeSantis expressed support but opposed the creation of encampments in areas that might disrupt public activities. Perry said, “This has been a longstanding goal of certain really fascist repressive people throughout the years.” Perry maintains that the bill is “racist, elitist, and repressive,” and further marginalizes already marginalized communities. This approach reflects broader societal attitudes, with some likening it to “NIMBY”-ism (not in my backyard) where individuals resist having houseless populations near their communities due to various concerns, including living conditions and prejudice.

Corporate outlets, such as the Washington Post and USA Today, have covered this bill and some of its implications. By contrast, Prism’s article dissected recent precedents for the bill and its discriminatory origins. The independent news outlet Truthout republished the Prism report.

Source: Alexandra Martinez, “New Florida Bill Could Force Unhoused People Into Encampments,” Prism, February 22, 2024.

Student Researcher: Shonna Mae Porcadilla (City College of San Francisco) 

Faculty Evaluator: Jennifer Levinson (City College of San Francisco)

The owner of the politically right-leaning New York Sun has emerged as the favourite to acquire the Daily and Sunday Telegraph ahead of Friday’s deadline for bids.

Though a late entrant to the auction British-born Dovid Efune’s BID is considered by several parties as the potential new frontrunner.

He is thought able to offer a competitive bid of around £550m while not attracting the political and regulatory objections that saw a bid backed by the United Arab Emirates ruling family blocked by the government.

Mr Efune is one of only two bidders to have attended senior management presentations at the Telegraph.

They have broadly welcomed the prospect of his ownership while conceding that “none of the bidders are perfect”.

If the bid is successful it could provide a link between the Telegraph and its former owner Conrad Black.

Lord Black, who is a regular contributor to the New York Sun, was convicted of fraud and obstructing justice in 2007 and jailed for more than three years, but was pardoned in 2019 by Donald Trump when he was US President.

There are several other bidders who remain in the hunt for one of Britain’s most influential and profitable daily newspapers and its Sunday sister publication.

Hedge fund tycoon Sir Paul Marshall recently acquired the Spectator for £100m and appointed former Conservative minister Michael Gove as the new editor.

Backed by funds from fellow hedge fund boss Ken Griffin, some have speculated that Sir Paul wants to add to a growing right-leaning media empire that includes GB News.

However, sources close to the deal suggest that the bid may be losing momentum.

National World, which owns regional titles including the Scotsman and the Yorkshire Post, is also in the running and its owner, David Montgomery, was the other bidder to attend a presentation by the current Telegraph management.

Attendees were reportedly underwhelmed by his plans for the group – perhaps unsurprising given his track record of cutting jobs at other titles.

One attendee described his ideas for the Telegraph’s future as “dated” and “a bit like dad dancing – he doesn’t understand modern media”.

Lord Rothermere, the controlling shareholder of the Daily Mail, is thought to have refreshed interest in the auction having previously walked away citing inevitable competition objections from regulators and a new Labour government.

Former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi, who is close to the Telegraph’s former owners, the Barclay family, is also thought to be trying to raise money in the Middle East to finance a bid.

Rupert Murdoch’s News UK had shown early interest but is no longer considered a bidder, having been more interested in the Spectator.

Sources close to the deal say there are other potential bidders who may emerge as Friday’s midnight deadline approaches.

The Telegraph is back up for sale after an audacious attempt backed by Redbird IMI – a vehicle largely funded by Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour – to take ownership of both the Telegraph and the Spectator by paying off the previous owner’s debts collapsed.

The bid was vetoed by the previous Conservative government, who balked at the idea of a foreign state having majority ownership of politically influential UK newspapers and periodicals.

Titles like the Telegraph and the Spectator don’t come up for sale very often and are considered “trophy assets”.

Assets like this have prestige and influence, which means they command a higher price than their financial performance alone can justify.

Redbird IMI effectively paid £600m for both titles with many thinking they had overpaid.

However, Sir Paul Marshall paid £100m for the Spectator alone despite the fact it only makes around £2m in profit a year.

That valuation has fuelled optimism at Redbird IMI that the Telegraph, which makes a profit of over £40m, will fetch “north of £500m”.

If so, the Gulf bidders will be able to walk away from their attempted swoop without damage to their wallets or dignity.

It is expected to take several weeks or even months for the ownership to be settled as various legal and regulatory hurdles are cleared.

ANOTHER major high street bank is offering a big £150 cash incentive – here’s how you can cash in.

The bank is launching a new switch-and-stay offer, as the switch wars between banks trying to poach customers from rivals continues.

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The Co-operative Bank has announced eligible customers could receive up to £150.

The first £75 is given when a customer completes a switch to the bank.

Then, the bank is offering three monthly instalments of £25 – another £75 – to make up the £150.

Both new and existing customers can apply to switch to a current account to make themselves eligible for the payment.

Like any good offer, there are a few boxes to tick off before the big payment comes in.

Customers must apply for a Standard Current Account or Everyday Extra account.

To be eligible, customers must not have benefited from a switch incentive at The Co-operative Bank since 1 November 2022.

And to receive the first £75, customers need to follow a series of rules.

They are:

• Deposit a minimum of £1,000 into their new account (this includes balances transferred as part of the switch).
• Have 2 active Direct Debits.
• Make a minimum of 10 debit card or digital wallet transactions (pending payments will not count toward fulfilment of this criteria).
• Register for our online and/or mobile banking service.
• Set up the debit card in a digital wallet (Apple Pay, Samsung Wallet or Google Pay).

That leaves the three £25 instalments – and there are some rules to claim them too.

Bankers need to deposit at least £1,000 into their account, have two direct debits and make a minimum of 10 debit card transactions.

Co-operative Bank director of products John Ward: “We’re really pleased to launch this offer today and hope it will encourage more people to consider switching to The Co-operative Bank – the only UK high street bank with a customer-led Ethical Policy, which guides how we do business.

“This offer allows eligible new and existing customers to benefit from up to £150 for switching and staying with The Co-operative Bank as their main current account provider.”

Nationwide, Lloyds, Santander and others have all been offering incentives over summer, with the switch wars looking set to continue into autumn.

It’s always advisable to check whether an offer is right for your personal circumstances.

Another blow for journalistic integrity – giving awards to terrorists and terror supporters masking themselves as journalists.

On Wednesday, the News and Documentary Emmys Awards did not shy away from it. This is what the world has come to, and we must wake up to this fact. 

“It’s Bisan from Gaza and I’m Still Alive” is a powerful documentation of daily life for displaced people in Gaza – from a surface level point of view. It’s an approximately eight minute video on YouTube that documents one activist, Bisan Owda’s experience as a displaced person on the grounds of Al-Shifa Hospital. The biggest kicker is the moment when Owda cries out as she says she narrowly avoided death after the IAF struck a hospital entrance.

But when one considers all the facts on the ground, the realization of a certain fabrication of facts and distortion of reality come to light. It’s biased reporting, from Al Jazeera and a woman with terror ties.

If you missed the News Emmys, here’s the scoop:

Besides the terrorists honored throughout, Bisan Owda won an Emmy for ‘Outstanding Hard News Feature Story.’
But just a decade ago, she was leading PFLP rallies in Gaza.

Journalism is not a crime, but terrorism certainly is. pic.twitter.com/Qwhs1kxXfz

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) September 26, 2024

Bisan Owda, 27, was known for her cultural content before October 7, but she was also tied to The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) as recently as 2019. The PFLP is recognized as a terror organization by the European Union, the United States and Israel for its part in 1970’s global terror attacks, as well as the First and Second Intifadas.

🧵 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐢𝐬𝐚𝐧 𝐎𝐰𝐝𝐚 𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐞́

Bisan Owda, the Peabody Award-winning and Emmy-nominated queen of Gaza propaganda, is a member of the PFLP terrorist organization.

Here she is in 2015 leading a rally celebrating the PFLP’s 48th anniversary, looking very journalist-y pic.twitter.com/T7Izziqs5w

— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) July 27, 2024

According to this article cited, Owda still supports actions of the PFLP today.

𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 @mrconfino 𝐚𝐧𝐝 @EmilieJger2 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐅𝐋𝐏 𝐄𝐦𝐦𝐲 𝐍𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐞

Rough translation: “[Bisan Owda] explains that it is her in the video from 2015, that she did host an annual meeting of the PFLP, and that she still generally supports what she… pic.twitter.com/WVODi1tit3

— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) September 9, 2024

Owda, in association with AJ+ (Al Jazeera Plus) won an Emmy for “It’s Bisan from Gaza and I’m Still Alive” in the short form category for outstanding hard news feature story. This, along with two other Al Jazeera wins in the Outstanding Climate, Environment & Weather Coverage as well as Outstanding Feature Story in Spanish categories.

This is the moment when AJ+ representatives made their “thank you” statements on stage:

The #NewsEmmys Award for Outstanding Hard News Feature Story: Short Form goes to It’s Bisan from Gaza and I’m Still Alive | Aj+ Reports (@ajplus). pic.twitter.com/lKTDR9sfys

— News & Documentary Emmys (@newsemmys) September 26, 2024

Throughout the ceremony, it was said three times that more than 100 Palestinian journalists were killed in the Gaza Strip since the start of the Israel-Hamas War, but what was missing?

Conveniently, how many of these ‘journalists’ were affiliated with terror groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad was missing from the acknowledgment. Omission of this kind of information is dangerous and of course, misleads viewers.

This isn’t the first and only award granted to Owda or to ‘journalists’ in Gaza for their ‘coverage’ of the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel and the subsequent war.

Owda also won two more awards for the same report, including a Peabody Award. Among others include AP’s win for Picture of the Year Award back in March for its disturbing image of murdered Israeli Shani Louk on the back of a pickup truck packed with Hamas terrorists on October 7.

The other side to this is that while Hollywood was busy rewarding terrorists on Wednesday, Berlin’s German Television Awards was honoring Jewish actors and creators across the pond at the same time.

“Die Zweiflers,” a miniseries about a Jewish family in Frankfurt with a delicatessen empire, won four awards. The cast of the show stars a list of both Jewish and Israeli actors.

What can we take away from all this? Two things: 1)  No, journalism is not a crime, but terrorism is, and 2) Maybe it’s time to shift focus away from traditional awards.

Liked this article? Follow HonestReporting on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok to see even more posts and videos debunking news bias and smears, as well as other content explaining what’s really going on in Israel and the region.

Image Credits
– Featured Graphic: ITU Pictures via Flickr

– Embedded Image: ddp/Cornelius via Reuters Connect

When discussing the economy after the interest rate cuts last week, chair of the US Federal Reserve Jay Powell made an interesting comment about jobs numbers and immigration. “If you are having millions of people come into the labour force, and you are creating 100,000 jobs, you’re going to see unemployment go up,” he said. Well, mostly. Today on the show, the entire staff of the Unhedged newsletter – Rob Armstrong and Aiden Reiter – get together to discuss how immigration might be affecting unemployment. Also, they go long and short China’s new stimulus programmes.

For a free 30-day trial to the Unhedged newsletter go to: https://www.ft.com/unhedgedoffer

You can email Robert Armstrong at robert.armstrong@ft.com and Katie Martin at katie.martin@ft.com.

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

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SOUTHERN WATER is in talks to import water from fjords in Norway — in the event of a severe drought.

The shock plan to bring in supplies from more than 1,000 miles away comes just a month after the firm’s boss Lawrence Gosden complained there was “too much rain”.

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The company, which serves 4.7 million households in Sussex, Kent, and the Isle of Wight, is in conversations with a Norwegian firm to ship in 45million litres of water a day into Hampshire.

It stressed it was a “last resort option” amid concerns there would be shortfall while construction on a new reservoir takes place.

The cost would end up being added to customer bills.

It is likely to outrage households further as the average Southern Water bill is already expected to rise from £420 by 43 per cent to £603 by 2030, according to recent Ofwat documents.

The firm is majority owned by MacQuarie. The Australian investor previously came underfire for saddling Thames Water, which it owned between 2006 and 2017, with billions of pounds of debt so it could afford bumper dividends.

Southern Water imposed a hosepipe ban in August 2022, the first such for a decade, after a heatwave caused the driest July since 1935.

It was also ranked as one of the worst for sewage spills, pumping 317,285 hours of sewage from overflows in 2023, the Environment Agency found.

The Norwegian firm that it would use is Extreme Drought Resilience Service.

Its website says it offers to ­supply “those required to insure against critical shortages to their own water resources due to major outages or extreme drought”.

Tim McMahon, Southern’s managing director for water, said importation would be a “last ­minute contingency measure”.

He said it would only be used in the event of a drought in the early 2030s and “something considerably worse than the drought of 1976”.

Mike Keil, of the Consumer Council for Water, said that while customers want the security of having a reliable service, that should still come at a good value.

He said: “Water resources in the south of England are under intense pressure and water ­companies need to have a robust long-term plan, but that must not come at an unreasonable cost to customers or the environment.”

Meanwhile, the owner of South West Water yesterday said it had taken a £16million hit from ­parasite-contaminated water in parts of Devon.

Around 17,000 households in the town of Brixham had to boil their water for eight weeks because of the diarrhoea-causing bug that was in the supplies.

Pennon had to flush the network and provide bottles of water to affected customers.

It has also said it is paying £3.5million in compensation.

BUST AND WIN FOR BRA BOSS

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AN ENTREPRENEUR who set up her own lingerie company from her living room has cashed in to the tune of £45.7million.

Sarah Tremellen, 58, launched Bravissimo in 1995 after finding a dearth of big-busted bra options when she was a size 34G during a pregnancy.

She previously said: “You don’t have to have big boobs to work here, but it helps.”

Almost three decades after setting up the firm she and her husband, Mike, have struck a deal to sell to Wacoal Europe, which also owns the bra brands Freya and Fantasie.

The Warwickshire-based firm, which started out with mail order, sells lingerie and swimwear up to L cups online and from 25 stores across the UK.

Mrs Tremellen said. “I have loved creating and growing Bravissimo. It has been an ­absolute privilege to be able to bring a range of bigger cup size lingerie and swimwear to so many wonderful women.”

AI ADDS A BIT MORR

ARTIFICIAL intelligence cameras have helped keep shelves at Morrisons stocked and boost sales, the store’s chief said yesterday.

The grocer reported a 2.9 per cent rise in sales in the third quarter, which boss Rami Baitiéh said was helped by cameras monitoring stock and reordering when needed.

The supermarket confirmed it had struck a £331million ground rent deal on 76 shops to cut its debtpile from its £7billion takeover.