Six minutes of news from around the nation.

Advocates urge broader clemency despite Biden's death row commutes; Bald eagle officially becomes national bird, a conservation success; Hispanic pastors across TX, U.S. wanted for leadership network; When bycatch is on the menu.

Transcript

The Public News Service Daily Newscast, December the 26th, 2024.

I'm Mike Clifford.

In one of his final acts in the White House, President Joe Biden has commuted the sentences of 37 people with federal death row convictions to life sentences without parole.

Our Shantia Hudson reports some organizations would like to see Biden go further.

Groups working on justice system reform say it's a start, but they think clemency should also be extended to others serving unfairly long sentences due to outdated policies.

Zoe Towns, who heads the group forward.us, points to changes in laws and sentencing practices that make many older sentences inconsistent with today's standards.

Well, there's actually been quite a few laws that have changed and a lot of practices changed in the last 15 years based on just like the huge shift in public opinion about mass incarceration, just the harms of long sentences.

Earlier this month, Biden also granted clemency to nearly 1,500 people in a single day.

Shantia Hudson reporting.

Polling by fwd.us says more than 80 percent of voters support expanding clemency with many Americans having direct experience with incarceration in their families.

Next, the United States has the national mammal, tree and flower, but the status of America's most treasured bird wasn't always so clear, officially or ecologically, until now.

Last week, the bald eagle officially became the national bird of the US, but more than 50 years ago, pesticide use had decimated bald eagle populations.

Researchers recorded the lowest number of nesting pairs in 1963 at just 417.

Amy Delich with Defenders of Wildlife says pesticides like DDT work their way up the food chain in a process known as biomagnification.

A species like a bald eagle, which eats a lot of fish, they are essentially getting a dose from everything that those fish have eaten in their lifetimes.

So that biomagnification is why these pesticide issues show up worst in some of the top of the food chain animals, like bald eagles.

Delich says pesticides interfered with the bald eagle's calcium levels, which caused eggshells to be weak and less likely to hatch.

I'm Zimone Perez.

The Endangered Species Act will celebrate its 51st anniversary on Saturday.

And the deadline to apply is approaching for pastors who want to participate in the 2025 Hispanic Leadership Network.

It's offered by the Hispanic Access Foundation.

Director Dr. Pablo Juarez says the participants meet once a month virtually and in person.

We're teaching how to know themselves as a leader, their strength.

Then we're teaching how to connect with their community, how to recruit volunteers and hire personnel, how to train those volunteers and staff, how to raise funds.

The 10-month program teaches leadership skills to Latino pastors in Texas and elsewhere around the US and Puerto Rico.

For information on how to apply, email info@hispanicaccess.org.

This is Public News Service.

Next to California, where chefs and fishing companies interested in more sustainable seafood are promoting less well-known and underutilized fish caught alongside more popular species.

More chefs are using incidental non-target species like Pacific octopus, wolf eel, skate, and dogfish.

San Francisco chef Jacob Harth is preparing to open a restaurant called Winnie's, where he says he'll serve ethically caught fish.

We prefer to use more responsible methods of harvest, like hook and line, as opposed to indiscriminate trawl fishing and netting, because it not only provides more longevity for the species and the ocean, but it also produces a better quality.

For us, it's a no-brainer.

The US imports close to 65 percent of its seafood, often from less well-regulated foreign fisheries.

I'm Suzanne Potter.

This story produced with original reporting from Leilani Marie LeBong for Foodprint.

And a new federal rule aims to close a loophole that allows coal companies to walk away from their obligations to pay disability benefits and health insurance to miners who worked for them and contracted black lung disease.

Brendan Muckeyan-Bates with the Appalachian Citizens Law Center says the recent merger of coal giants, Arch Resources, and Consol Energy, both of which have relied heavily on self-insurance, has advocates concerned about how future black lung liabilities will be covered.

The trust fund that exists currently was not necessarily set up in a way to accommodate this corporate shedding of healthcare liabilities.

The Labor Department rule now requires companies to put down 100 percent of their liabilities as collateral and requires a yearly review process of their self-insurance policies to help ensure adequate resources for benefits are available.

A recommendation to create a publicly accessible data portal to make compliance with the new regulation more transparent was not included in the final rule.

Nadia Ramlagan reporting.

Finally, the National Retail Federation expects people will spend nearly $989 billion by the end of the year on holiday shopping.

But those costs can't compare to an injury or death due to unknowingly buying a faulty product.

Many children's toys are manufactured in overseas countries like China and India.

In their haste to avoid possible Trump administration tariffs, a few safety steps may have been skipped before sending them to the states, says one product liability attorney.

Dan Fountain believes consumers' assumptions about toy reliability are not always accurate.

The general public has this notion that the government checks and tests all the products that we buy.

Surely somebody has tested all these things and they're safe for my children or my family.

But in reality, that's not how it works.

I'm Terry Dee reporting.

This is Mike Clifford for Public News Service, member and listener supported.

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