Facebook is a more fertile breeding ground for fake news than Twitter, and those on the far ends of the liberal-conservative spectrum are most likely to share it, according to new CU Boulder research.

The paper, in the journal Human Communication Research, also found that people who lack trust in conventional media, and in one another, post misinformation more often.

We found that certain types of people are disproportionally responsible for sharing the false, misleading, and hyper-partisan information on social media, said lead author Toby Hopp, an assistant professor in the Department of Advertising, Public Relations and Media Design. If we can identify those types of users, maybe we can get a better grasp of why people do this and design interventions to stem the transfer of this harmful information.

The paper comes at a time when, amid a global pandemic and contentious run-up to a presidential election, social media companies are grappling with how to curb so-called fake news.

In the past month, Twitter, Facebook and Google began labeling misleading, disputed or unverified posts about coronavirus, vowing to delete those that threaten public health. Twitter has also slapped labels on President Donald Trumps tweets, dubbing them as inaccurate or glorifying violence. Trump responded by accusing Twitter of silencing conservative speech. Meanwhile, Facebook employees staged a virtual walk-out saying their company wasnt doing enough to address suspect posts.

A decade or two ago, traditional news organizations played a key gatekeeping role in determining what was true or not true, said Hopp. Now, with the proliferation of social media and with traditional news organizations under financial distress, there is a sea change occurring in the way that information flows through society.

Previous research has shown that older adults and those who identify as Republican are more likely to share fake news. But Hopp wanted to go beyond demographic or political labels.

We wanted to look at more nuanced factors indicating how these people see the world around them, Hopp said.

To do so, his team recruited 783 regular Facebook and Twitter users over the age of 18 and, with their permission, collected and analyzed all of their posts for the period between August 1, 2015, and June 6, 2017 (before, during, and after the 2016 election). Participants also took a lengthy survey to assess their ideological conservatism vs. liberalism and identify how much they trusted friends, family and community members, and mainstream media.

We can disagree, but when we have fundamentally different views about what information is true and what is not, democracy becomes very difficult to maintain."

- Tobias Hopp

The researchers then looked at who shared content from 106 websites identified as fake news or countermedia sites by watchdog groups or legacy news organizations like NPR or U.S. News & World Report.

Despite the fact that we tend to call it fake news, a lot of this stuff is not completely false, said Hopp, who prefers the term countermedia. Rather, it is grossly biased, misleading and hyper-partisan, omitting important information.

The good news: 71% of Facebook users and 95% of Twitter users shared no countermedia posts. The bad news: 1,152 pieces of fake news were shared via Facebook, with a single user responsible for 171. On Twitter, 128 pieces of countermedia were shared.

We found that Facebook is the central conduit for the transfer of fake news, said Hopp.

In the Facebook sample, those self-identified as extremely conservative7 on a scale of 1 to 7accounted for the most fake news shared, at 26%. In the Twitter sample, 32% of fake news shares came from those who scored a 7.

But those who scored a 1, identifying as extremely liberal, also shared fake news frequently, accounting for 17.5% of shares on Facebook and 16.4% on Twitter.

In all, about one-fifth of users at the far ideological extremes were responsible for sharing nearly half of the fake news on the two platforms.

It is not just Republicans or just Democrats, but rather, people who areleft or rightmore ideologically extreme, said Hopp.

Those in the ideological middle and those with high levels of media and social trust weregenerally speakingthe least likely to share fake news.

People with high levels of social trust are more likely to compile online social networks comprised of diverse individuals, and this can hamper the spread of fake news, said Hopp, noting that when a fellow user calls out a post as inaccurate,others may be less likely to share it. If someone posts something that is incorrect, false or misleading, I dont think it hurts for individual users to provide a factual rebuttal.

The authors note that the sample is not necesarily representative of the general population of all social media users nationwide, and more research is necessary.

With several other papers in the works, the authors, including Assistant Professor of Journalism Pat Ferucci and Assistant Professor of Advertising Chris Vargo, hope to provide insight to lawmakers, companies and individual users hoping to stem the fake news tide.

We can disagree, but when we have fundamentally different views about what information is true and what is not, democracy becomes very difficult to maintain, said Hopp.

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Who shares the most fake news? New study sheds light - CU Boulder Today

How did the continents form? Although to a certain extent this remains an open question, the oceanic plateau of the Kerguelen Islands may well provide part of the answer, according to a French-Australian team led by the Gosciences Environnement Toulouse laboratory.

From a geological point of view, it is the Earths outermost layer that distinguishes the continents from the oceans: oceanic crust, which is relatively thin, is mainly made up of basalts, resulting from the melting of the Earths underlying mantle, whereas continental crust, which is thicker and of granitic composition, is derived from magmas that evolved at depth before solidifying.

Such magmas form especially at subduction zones, where one tectonic plate dives beneath another. However, a study published in the journal Terra Novaprovides evidence in support of a second model: the formation of embryonic continents within oceanic plateaus such as the Kerguelen plateau.

Formed by extensive basalt flows, the crust of such plateaus is abnormally thick compared to normal oceanic crust. The researchers focused on a rock of the granite family (syenite) emplaced in the plateau lavas.

By studying the geometry and internal structure of the syenite intrusion and carrying out extensive dating of the rocks, they were able to reconstruct its history and show that it bears strong similarities to those of a large number of intrusions located in continental crust.

Such similarities include the discontinuous injection over time of multiple magma sheets (which progressively uplifted the surrounding rocks), the duration of its construction (around 3.7 million years), and the magma fluxes.

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Could this syenite intrusion be an embryonic continent? To further refine this hypothesis, the same team is currently studying the chemical composition of the syenites in order to understand the origin and evolution of the magmas.

CNRS (Dlgation Paris Michel-Ange)

Header Image Credit : Michel de Saint Blanquat

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The Kerguelen Oceanic Plateau Sheds Light on the Formation of Continents - HeritageDaily

The second part of the exhibition which runs from June 12 to July 19 at the gallery in Jongno, central Seoul, features five artists of Koreas experimental art -- Lee Seung-taek, Kwak Duck-jun, Park Hyun-ki, Lee Kun-yong and Lee Kang-so who were active from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s, expanding Koreas contemporary art to photography, sculptures, media art and installations.

The exhibition shows a total of 70 works by 16 Korean artists, including the five experimental artists and 13 artists from different countries such as Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, French conceptual artist Francois Morellet, and American sculptor Fred Sandback. All the artists have built a special relationship with Gallery Hyundai over the past 50 years, according to the gallery.

Gallery Hyundai was the first Korean commercial gallery to participate in an international art fair in 1987, introducing Korean art at Chicago International Art Exposition, one of the three major international art fairs of the era. The gallery also began introducing foreign contemporary artists to Korea in the 1980s.

The second session of the special exhibition also introduces Korean contemporary artists including Kang Ik-joong, who is best known for works that consist of numerous small paintings measuring under eight centimeters square, Kim Sung-yoon who focuses on still life paintings reinterpreting the art genre in a contemporary way, and Kim Min-jung, who exclusively uses traditional Korean hanji paper for her works that are created through a repetitive process of burning and layering them.

The first part of the special exhibition that ran in May showcased some 70 masterpieces by 40 contemporary artists, including Koreas leading abstract painters, Dansaekhwa artists and Paik Nam-june, the founder of video art.

The major dot painting Universe 05-IV-71 #200 by Kim Whan-ki, a pioneer of Koreas abstract paintings, was on also on show for the first time since it fetched record-breaking 88 million Hong Kong dollars at Christies auction.

Online reservations are required to visit the special exhibition due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Founded on April 4, 1970, Gallery Hyundai has held around 800 exhibitions of 400 artists from home and abroad, growing into a hub for Koreas contemporary painters.

By Park Yuna (yunapark@heraldcorp.com)

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Gallery Hyundai sheds light on Koreas experimental in 2nd part of 50th anniversary show - The Korea Herald

Richard Schneirov is Professor Emeritus at Indiana State University in Terre Haute.He is the author (with John B. Jentz) ofChicago in the Age of Capital: Class, Politics, and Democracy during the Civil War and Reconstruction(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012).

One hundred and forty-three years ago the nation was shaken by a nationwide series of strikes almost amounting to a mass rebellion. Though there are clear and obvious differences between the issues, modes of collective action, and the participants of that upheaval and the multiracial protests of African-Americans, other people of color, and their white allies that have occurred over the past two weeks, the similarities are real enough to offer some perspective on present circumstances.

The issue that started the 1877 affair was not police brutality and institutional racism but economic inequality. The year 1877 was the low point of the 1873-1878 depression, which brought wage cuts of 10 to 30 percent, driving many workers and their families to the point of desperation. The strikes began when railroad workers in Martinsburg, West Virginia walked off the job following a 10 percent cut on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. The strike spread west and soon engulfed transportation centers and major industrial cities including Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Chicago.

But, like the rallies and marches against the murder of George Floyd, what started out as a protest quickly escalated beyond the control of those who sought to lead it. It devolved into heterogeneous crowds with their own dynamics, sometimes resulting in violent clashes with authorities and property damage.

In Pittsburgh, after it became clear that the Pittsburgh police and militia sympathized with the local crowds, authorities called in the militia from Philadelphia, sparking outrage and violence. After the outsiders fired on the protesters causing twenty deaths, a diverse crowd tried to burn down the round house into which the militia had fled and then burned and looted the rail yards.

In Chicago the railroad strike quickly escalated into a general strike for a 20 percent wage increase and the eight-hour day.Mobile crowds of various occupations (or no occupation at all) traversed the industrial districts calling out employees to strike. To most of the press, they were lawless mobs--ragamuffins, vagrants, and saloon bummers. But a more accurate description was that they were roaming committees of strikers often joined by passersby and teenage boys out for adventure.The presss conflation of protesters expressingserious social grievances with these hangers-on encouraged much of the public to dismiss the whole affair as a riot.

After the first day, male crowd members were joined by working class women with their dresses tucked up, sometimes carrying stockings filled with stones to use as weapons. When they were confronted by police and militia the results were bloody and tragic.Despite the brutality of the police in the present protests, the forces of order in 1877 were far more merciless in suppressing the strikes and disorder. In Chicago, at least thirty working people lay dead after four days of clashes with police.In New York, where those in authority acted on advice akin to Donald Trumps call to dominate protesters, there were no strikes after police brutally attacked and dispersed a mass meeting on the first day of the strike.

Who were these crowd participants of 1877?Though few African-Americans lived in northern industrial areas, in places where significant numbers of black people lived, notably Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Louisville, they participated in the upheaval with alacrity.But the largest portion of strikers in the industrial cities were white immigrants, mostly Irish, German, Bohemian (Czech), and Scandinavian.These men and women were at the bottom of the class and status orders of the new industrial society then taking shape in the urban North.They were acutely conscious of themselves as a group set apart from respectable society, looked down upon and despised as one young striker put it.

The anger they displayed at the police and militia closely parallels that of todays protesters. In Chicago, Irish crowd members called the police peelers, a term of derision imported from Ireland, where the constabulary of Sir Robert Peel had enforced British dictates on the colonized Irish.While police brutality was not an issue raised by the strikes, it did become a major issue afterward. In Chicago, a new mayor was elected in 1879 having explicitly promised to limit the use of the police to suppress strikes and break up the gatherings of Socialists. In New York, where the police were staunchly backed by leading businessmen then in control of city government, they ran rampant over the labor movement, making their brutality a major issue in the labor partys Henry George campaign of 1886. In 1890, the unions of the citys construction workers charged that the citys police force as a body is dishonest, brutal, even criminal.

There is much we can learn from recalling the 1877 strikes. Throughout American history, white immigrant and native-born working people as well as black people have found it necessary to mount unorganized, spontaneous nationwide protests and have faced off against the police in angry, sometimes bloody encounters. During these episodes, the news media has seized on instances of rioting and opportunistic looting to dismiss the substantive demands of protesters.

And then as well as now, indiscriminate police violence in dealing with protests has elevated the issue of police accountability into a major political issue.

Continued here:
The Great Upheaval of 1877 Sheds Light on Today's Protests - History News Network (HNN)

Healthcares disparate data has caused longstanding and widespread challenges for decades, hindering day-to-day operations and slowing the shift to value-based care. The latest federal interoperability rule, finalized by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) in March, sets out to address this issue. Considered a major milestone in the push for interoperability, this rule builds on the HITECH Act and 21st Century Cures Act to mandate universal data and technology standards, which will leverage healthcare data to foster greater industry-wide collaboration and alignment.

By the time this landmark federal rule was unveiled, the toll of Covid-19 on the U.S. healthcare system had escalated and priorities were shifting to caring for the huge influxes of Covid-19 patients while supporting other critical processes, like ramping up telehealth to fill care gaps and making rapid decisions about reimbursements. While ONC delayed enforcement of the rule by six months to allow the industry to better meet immediate demands of the crisis, the pandemic has underscored the critical need for interoperability and the healthcare benefits that it can achieve.

Changing the timeline, not the priorityBy placing intense strain on healthcare organizations and forcing them to do more with less time and resources, the Covid-19 pandemic has been exacerbated by healthcares lack of interoperability while also demonstrating the many challenges standing in the way. Initiatives like setting up alternative care sites to handle the surge of patients, tracking which patients have already been tested and the type of tests, or even ensuring ED doctors have a complete medical history have been slowed due to longstanding issues around data sharing.

By highlighting the intense urgency for interoperability, this experience has also shown how powerful data can be, both in the current public health crisis and beyond. The vision of true interoperability hinges on the ability to unlock and share siloed healthcare data from clinical, financial, lab, pharma, demographic, and socioeconomic information. This is key for building a longitudinal perspective of all patient information to offer a single source of truth and unite stakeholders around shared insights. An interoperable data environment improves clinical outcomes and administrative cost efficiencies by standardizing data and technology to better deliver meaningful insights and help establish greater continuity of care, bolstering quality and patient satisfaction while reducing waste and errors. By improving alignment among providers and payers, interoperability can also encourage an industry-wide shift towards more personalized, continuous, and proactive care, which can optimize quality and cost performance in a value-based care world.

Interoperability during a global pandemicWhile Covid-19 has illuminated healthcares struggles with interoperability, it has also provided an invaluable learning opportunity and, in some ways, established the data and technology landscape healthcare needs to thrive in the future. ONC laid the foundation for greater interoperability by requiring seamless access and exchange. However, payers and providers must also be able to look to advanced analytics in order to gain actionable insights that will move the needle on collective efforts to improve risk assessments, care coordination, value-based reimbursement, and more.

A fully interoperable, analytics-driven ecosystem of all patient informationsuch as age, preexisting conditions, care disparities, genetics, social determinants of health, past procedures, and medication historywould be invaluable for public health, medical, and scientific experts working to identify high-risk patients and targeted therapies. Doctors would have access to comprehensive patient data to make informed, personalized care decisions quickly and accurately, which is equally important for clinicians on the frontlines as well as others filling in the gaps and addressing non-emergent needs. Payers would have access to the same datasets to make more streamlined and accurate decisions about pre-approvals, reimbursements, and claims, while staying more closely connected with their provider counterparts as they respond rapidly to meet the needs of the evolving situation.

Aside from care delivery, interoperable data and analytics technology could benefit broader population and public health initiatives launched in response to the pandemic. While elderly and other individuals with preexisting conditions have been hit especially hard by the virus, patients with health disparities linked to social factors are also high-risk, though the demographic and social determinant data pointing to this is not typically available in most EHR or claims data. Applying AI-driven analytics to comprehensive patient records, including social determinants data, could better identify all at-risk populations and drive the development of proactive approaches, guidelines to aid vulnerable populations, and personalized clinical interventions.

Access to diverse patient data, combined with the ability to extract actionable information, could also help the U.S. better track infection spread even amid an ongoing lack of COVID-19 tests. In fact, analyzing claims data to find anomalies in the correlation between flu testing and flu diagnoses has been shown to accurately predict regional surges in Covid-19 cases. Leveraging interoperable data in this way could help public health organizations forecast areas at risk for an outbreak and make informed decisions regarding the implementation of social distancing measures. More universally accessible health data could also help city and state governments determine the viability of reopening and assess how their communities are responding to reopening measures once implemented.

Envisioning an interoperable futureThough healthcare has an arduous journey ahead between the response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the shift to greater interoperability, both challenges are setting the scene for stakeholders to work together and drive improvements in quality and cost. By laying out clear guidelines, the federal interoperability requirements offer universal data and IT standards to foster a more collaborative environment among payers and providers built on greater trust, shared information, and better alignment across clinical, economic, and administrative centers. Greater interoperability and industry collaboration will help address waste, which comprises 25 percent of annual healthcare spending. It will also drive down administrative complexities, which account for most wasteful spending at $256.6 billion annually.

Taking the components of the rule one step further, the industry would benefit from the introduction of a single patient identifier, something nearly all other developed countries already have in place. A single patient identifier would allow patients to have access to their healthcare data and carry it with them from health plan to health plan and provider to provider. In the context of a pandemic, a single patient identifier would give providers and payers a clear, concise, and accurate view of a patients health and medical history, allowing them to quickly and accurately assess patient risk and make informed treatment decisions together. This would also allow public health officials to track the spread of the disease with much greater accuracy.

When applied in this way, interoperability can provide a 360-degree view of the patient while delivering value-based care and better outcomes. It can also help preserve the financial health of healthcare organizations while mitigating unpredictable challenges. This pandemic has demonstrated just how far healthcare must go on the road to interoperability, but it has also fueled the movement that has been building across the industry for more than a decade. Now is the time for health leaders to ensure they are poised to adapt to the federal interoperability rule and help drive this long overdue evolution.

Photo: LeoWolfert, Getty Images

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Racing against the clock: Covid-19 sheds new light on need for widespread interoperability - MedCity News

Especially when the fish was tagged more than 11 years ago.

Scott "Sugar Lips" Phipps of Hatton, N.D., found that out shortly before 3 p.m. Wednesday, June 10, when he landed a 31-inch walleye on Creel Bay of Devils Lake that had a small tag attached near the back of its dorsal fin.

Just like shooting a banded duck or goose is a memorable occurrence for waterfowl hunters, so it is for anglers who catch a tagged fish.

I can tell you that fish made our trip, said Phipps fishing buddy, Scott Hall of Grand Forks, who was there to share in the excitement of the memorable catch.

Hall said hed caught a 29-inch walleye the previous week while fishing near Spirit Lake Casino with another friend.

That had been the biggest walleye either of us had firsthand witnessed caught from the lake until his, Hall said of Phipps walleye. Both his and my big fish were caught bottom bouncing spinners with leeches in 14 to 17 feet of water.

A close-up highlighted by an orange circle shows the location of a tag in the 31-inch walleye Scott Phipps of Hatton, N.D., caught and released Wednesday, June 10, on Devils Lake. The fish had been tagged May 5, 2009, at the north end of Six-Mile Bay during the final year of a three-year tagging study the Game and Fish Department conducted on Devils Lake.

Phipps already has a 30-inch fat walleye on his wall, and so he decided to release the fish, said Hall, who wanted this story to be a surprise in advance of Phipps upcoming birthday July 6.

Other birthday surprises also are in the works, Hall says.

A newspaper clipping or online story would be an added bonus, Hall said. If he hears or sees your story from another friend before then, that'll be just as cool!

Before Phipps released the big walleye, they wrote down the tag number (5-2810) and reported the catch using the online form for reporting tagged fish on the North Dakota Game and Fish Department website.

Monday, June 15, Phipps got word from Game and Fish that the walleye had been tagged May 5, 2009, at the north end of Six-Mile Bay and was about 23 inches long at the time.

According to Randy Hiltner, northeast district fisheries supervisor for Game and Fish in Devils Lake, the department tagged 1,000 walleyes for three consecutive years from 2007 through 2009 at various sites around Devils Lake to learn more about walleye mortality and movements of the fish within and out of the big lake.

Given that amount of time, many of those fish likely either have been caught by anglers or died from natural causes. Based on previous aging data from Devils Lake, a 31-inch walleye would be at least 17 years old, according to Game and Fish Department estimates.

We have gotten very few tag returns in the past few years, Hiltner told the Herald. In 2017, we got nine returns. In 2018 there were two, in 2019, just one and in 2020, there has been one so far.

And quite a fish it was.

Being tagged just added to the Wow factor as neither of us had seen or caught one before, Hall said.

Dokken reports on outdoors. Call him at (701) 780-1148, (800) 477-6572 ext. 1148 or send email to bdokken@gfherald.com.

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11-year-old tag sheds light on the story of Hatton angler's 31-inch Devils Lake walleye - Grand Forks Herald

President Donald Trump pleaded with Chinas Xi Jinping during a 2019 summit to help his reelection prospects, according to a scathing new book by former Trump adviser John Bolton. (June 17)

ZEKE MILLER: What is, you know, obvious from reading the book is the detailed notes that he kept, the first-person contemporaneous account of the inner workings of the Trump administration through a number of known and unknown scandals that he is-- that he's writing about. So it's a-- you know, in one sense, he is just providing an inside account, a contemporaneous account of the things we've all watched play out over the last two or three years. And the other, he's revealing and making allegations of some other unknown claims-- charges against the president that could be something that, whether it be congressional investigators would look at but also certainly could be a factor in this year's presidential election.

Well, one of the most significant allegations in the book comes-- stems from the president's meeting with Chinese Leader Xi Jinping last June in Osaka, Japan and alongside the G20 meeting where Bolton, then National Security Advisor, recounts how he watched the president, in his words, plead with Xi to cut a deal with the United States on trade-- this is at a time when the two nations were in the middle of a trade war that was taking a toll on both their economies-- and encouraging the Chinese government to buy more US farm products with the explicit purpose of helping his own re-election campaign. And he called that a stunning revelation.

So far, we haven't heard much from the White House on the substantive allegations brought to bear by Bolton so far. White House officials have tried to impugn Bolton's credibility, in one case sending out an email to reporters listing all the times Democrats said that Bolton wasn't necessarily the most credible.

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Analysis as Bolton sheds light on Trump presidency - Yahoo News

There are countless kinds of addictions. You may be battling one yourself, or know someone else who is. The Great Lakes Recovery Center (GLRC) in Sault Ste. Marie, along with the Sault and Bay Mills Tribes, is hosting a free event Saturday, June 20 to shed light on substance abuse.

The organizations are holding their first Peer NSimple event at 1416 Easterday Avenue across from the recycling center. There will be informational tables, trivia, free food, and games.

With the recent COVID-19 restrictions being lifted, organizers are looking forward to this event.

Its kind of feels like a celebration because we all miss each other, said GLRC Recovery Coach, Andrea Kokko. And all those relationships you build with other people in recovery are so important. There is going to be someone here from GLRC thats actually going to be giving tours to show the community what we are doing here.

Its nothing but open arms. Its doesnt matter what your view is or walk of life, all we ask for is respect for your fellow person, expressed Sault Tribe Recovery Coach, Joseph Gravelle. You can come whether you are an addict in need, or a parent of an addict, or a person who is curious about whats going on with addictionmaybe looking for a little more insight or resources in the community.

For more information about the Peer NSimple event on June 20th from 1 4 PM, at 1416 West Easterday Ave. in Sault Ste. Marie, email akokko@greatlakesrecovery.org or click here.

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The Great Lakes Recovery Center Hosts Free Event to Shed Light on Substance Abuse - 9&10 News

Birdville school trustees will hold a special board meeting on Juneteenth to consider removing long-held Confederate imagery from one of its high schools.

The move comes after hundreds of students from Richland High School marched last week to call for the end of their schools Rebel mascot.

The virtual board meeting, set for 4 p.m. Friday, includes an action item to remove the mascot and related imagery and begin the process of naming a new mascot.

The discussion comes on Juneteenth, which commemorates the day in 1865 when slaves in Texas learned of their emancipation at the end of the Civil War.

Recent graduate Makayla Klie, who started a petition to do away with the Confederate branding, is hopeful that the board will take action where previous efforts to completely remove the imagery failed.

The first thing youre told as a freshman is to go look up Johnny Rebel on Google, she said referring to the personification of Confederate soldiers that has been used in music, literature and propaganda. The school has a spirit club called the Johnny Rebs. Its so blatantly racist. Its always bothered me, Klie said.

In 1993, Birdville completely did away with the Stars and Bars Confederate flag that used to be flown at Richland High events and had once been painted on the gym floor. The current Rebel flag is red and blue, with colors similar to those on the Confederate flag, with five stars to represent each letter in Rebel and RR written across it.

Various earlier efforts to eliminate the remaining Confederate imagery failed, including one in 2015.

Current efforts to do away with the Rebel mascot came after nationwide protests over the mistreatment of black people, especially in regards to police brutality.

Richland High had about 2,000 students this past school year, about 45% of them white, 36% Latino, 9% black and 6% Asian.

A petition to preserve the Rebel mascot has about 3,300 signatures. It says doing away with the mascot would also lead to the abolishment of various associated names, such as the Johnny Rebs and the Dixie Belles drill team.

Richland High school does not support racism in anyway [sic], wrote the recent graduate who started that petition. Racism will not simply disappear due to the Rebel mascot to change. People who are racist will remain racist even if the mascot changes.

Students at other schools are also pushing to shed symbols associated with racist history.

At the University of Texas, for example, dozens of athletes have said they want the school to stop using The Eyes of Texas song, which has been criticized for its connection to minstrel shows that used characters in blackface.

Other area schools long ago moved away from the Rebel mascot. In the 1970s, Dallas Thomas Jefferson High School changed to the Patriots, while the University of Texas at Arlington took up the Maverick mascot. Fort Worths Southwest High School changed to the Raiders in the 1980s.

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Is this North Texas school district finally ready to shed its Confederate imagery? - The Dallas Morning News

SYDNEY, June 16, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Author Trish Teske takes readers on an adventurous journey of hope set in an Australian bush fantasy world in her debut book, Gruntz: Finding zO. zO is home to Gruntz, human-like creatures inspired by the quintessential Australian animal, the koala. Their ears are furry, their skin is like velvet and they have claws. Readers can experience the universal themes of good versus evil, overcoming adversity and the importance of home and finding a best friend through this very relatable imaginary world.

The story follows 10-year-old grunt, Flynn, who was orphaned after a devastating bushfire five years earlier. He has been trying to fit in for what seems like forever. Now, just when he has made it onto the under-thirteen Dragons football team, the bully, Spike challenges him to a most despicable dare that could cost him everything. As the story unfolds, however, the two boys backgrounds are more similar than you can imagine.

Gruntz characters may look different but they experience the very same feelings as many young readers. They share the emotions of fun, happiness, loneliness, sadness and most of all the feeling of belonging. In the town of zO, there are champions and heroes, bullies and a villain.

Having grown up in regional North Queensland, I have always felt a deep connection to the Australian bush and bush life, says Teske. This was the inspiration for the setting of this story including the personal experiences of drought, bushfires and adversity. Throughout my life, I have always been inspired by those who fought for our country, so I drew on my personal experience and the importance of legacy to build this theme into the story. I wanted to empower young readers to manage situations of bullying by encouraging open communication and by building understanding and compassion between those involved. I made sure to share the emotional journey of both Flynn and his bully, Spike, to show how true resolution can be achieved.

Gruntz: Finding zO exposes current and contemporary Australian themes including bushfire, exclusion, bullying and war through a less confronting medium enabling young readers to connect with the characters challenges and experiences.

The book shows that bullying can be turned around if understanding and trust are part of the change. Gruntz: Finding zO presents the importance of planning to protect families, bushland and wildlife from bushfire, which is pivotal to the plot, as well as remembering the bravery and sacrifice of those past and present defending our world. The value of community and intergenerational relationships is also promoted, demonstrating how loving and safeguarding those closest to you helps protect everyone and everything in your community.

Gruntz: Finding zO

By Trish Teske

ISBN: 9781504320016 (softcover); 9781504320023 (electronic)

Available at the BalboaPress Online Bookstore, Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the author

With Leigh, her husband of over forty years, Teske lives on a leafy hilltop overlooking the lakes in northern New South Wales. She shares her passions of a cappella singing, reading, cooking, house renovating, motor homing, mosaics, costuming, gardening and volunteering with her much-loved family and friends.

Balboa Press Australia is a division of Hay House, Inc., a leading provider in publishing products that specialise in self-help and the mind, body and spirit genre. Through an alliance with the worldwide self-publishing leader Author Solutions, LLC, authors benefit from the leadership of Hay House Publishing and the speed-to-market advantages of the Author Solutions self-publishing model. For more information or to start publishing today, visit balboapress.com.au/ or call 1800 050 315.

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New Middle Grade Fantasy Book Sheds Light on the Importance of Love, Community and Australian Wildlife After Bushfire - GlobeNewswire