News from around the nation.

Daniel Penny Is Acquitted in Death of Jordan Neely on Subway; UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting latest: Man held for questioning in Pennsylvania; Unions: Green jobs are good paying jobs under new MA climate law; AR community colleges create new pathways to employment; Elon Musk, Joe Rogan spread misinformation on agriculture.

Transcript

The Public News Service Monday afternoon update.

I'm Mike Clifford.

First to New York were Daniel Penney, a former Marine who choked a fellow subway rider on an uptown F train last year, was acquitted on a charge of criminally negligent homicide on Monday, ending a case that had come to exemplify New York City's post-pandemic struggles.

That from the New York Times.

Meantime, from ABC News, police are questioning a man in Altoona, Pennsylvania, for the brazen Midtown Manhattan murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

ABC News reports the man was on a Greyhound bus traveling through Altoona on Monday.

When sources said he got off, walked into a McDonald's, witnesses recognized him from the images of the suspect circulated by police.

Labor unions in Massachusetts say the state's new climate law will create good jobs while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The law streamlines the siting and permitting process for new clean energy infrastructure and ensures contracted companies pay a fair wage.

Ryan Murphy with Climate Jobs Massachusetts says smaller wind and solar projects will include more registered apprenticeship programs to create not just jobs, but careers.

It's really making sure that these green jobs that the bill is going to create are actually good jobs with good pay and good benefits.

He says energy jobs have long provided strong wages, health care, and pension plans, and the green jobs of the future will do the same.

I'm Catherine Carley.

Next, students at eight Arkansas community colleges can benefit from new microcourses to prepare for the workforce.

The schools are collaborating with the Education Design Lab to create a curriculum of credentialing classes or micro pathways that when combined prepare a student for a job at or above the local median wage.

Lucas Paxton is the director of digital learning at Northwest Arkansas Community College.

He says they're getting input from employers and community leaders to ensure students have the skills needed for available positions.

We're seeing a transition to less need for the bachelor's degree, less need for the associate's degree.

They want that targeted training that's specific to the job that they have available.

He says students can complete the credentials in less than a year, saving them time and money.

I'm Freda Ross reporting.

And when the world's richest person was on the world's most streamed podcast recently, misinformation was spread about the meat industry in a state like Wyoming where there are more cows than people.

That raises concerns.

In the Joe Rogan experience with Elon Musk, Musk said the amount of beef people eat is irrelevant to climate change.

Scientific data shows otherwise.

Boston University professor Michelle Amazin says misinformation is often fueled by industry.

That's essentially the playbook on deceiving people about the harmful impacts of certain products.

And so we see this again regarding climate change.

Amazin likens it to when tobacco companies use what she calls "avatorials" to claim there was no connection between cigarette smoking and health.

This story produced as a sentiment, Wyoming News Service collaboration.

This is public news service.

A new report says fossil fuel lobbyists in two states with strong transparency and disclosure laws are not making full disclosures, including in Maryland.

Simone Perez has that story.

Maryland ranks seventh in the country and gets a grade of C+ in the report from a group called F- that tracks fossil fuel lobbying efforts across the US.

James Browning with F- says Maryland has strong laws requiring lobbyists to disclose their salaries and the bills they're working on.

But its audit found these disclosures are being made less than 50 percent of the time.

Browning says some lobbyists also appear to have major conflicts of interest.

What we also found is this rampant culture of lobbyists being sort of double agents for oil and gas companies at the same time they're working for climate conscious institutions.

Browning points to Johns Hopkins University's lobbying firm actively opposing a climate bill on behalf of the American Petroleum Institute.

The lobbying firm did not disclose that conflict.

Minnesota is credited for having strong wetland protections, but the research community warns the growing presence of factory farms in the Midwest makes it harder to shield these natural resources.

Mike Moen reports.

A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists says 30 million acres of wetlands in the upper Midwest are at risk of destruction by industrial agriculture and other heavy industries.

The authors say the US Supreme Court's recent decision to strip some federal protections from wetlands accelerates the potential loss.

The union, Stacey Wood, says because of the role wetlands play in flood mitigation, states in this region are likely to have a harder time limiting damage from a major rain event.

We know that flooding is a significant issue.

It's expensive and it's getting worse as the climate warms.

While Minnesota's loss might help offset some of the federal impact, courts say neighboring states like South Dakota and Iowa are more vulnerable to wetland loss.

Advocates for public lands access are raising alarms about a lawsuit that could be heard by the US Supreme Court.

Eric Tegethoff has more.

Utah has filed a suit arguing the US Bureau of Land Management is holding about 18.5 million acres of land in the state unconstitutionally, saying it can't keep unappropriated land in perpetuity.

Idaho and 12 other states have joined the suit.

They say federally controlled land should be transferred to states.

But head of the Idaho Wildlife Federation, Nick Fasciano, says that would be disastrous for public lands and the people who use them.

State ownership of land at this scale is a direct path to privatization.

State budgets do not have the capacity to manage land at enormous scale like this without selling it off.

Idaho has a constitutional mandate to maximize the financial return of the land under its management.

The US Justice Department said Utah's claims are without merit in a brief filed with the Supreme Court.

The BLM manages nearly 12 million acres of land in Idaho.

In total, there are more than 53 million acres of federally managed public land in the state.

The New York City Police Department is still searching for evidence in UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson's murder.

As police scour what clues they've gathered, it has been considered the suspect has fled the city.

I'm Edwin J. Vieira for Public News Service, member and listener supported.

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