News from around the nation.

Trump to select Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead HHS; New FBI data show no evidence of violent crime wave in Kentucky; Springfield IL gets federal grant to complete local, regional rail improvements; NYC charter revisions pass despite voter confusion; Study: Higher wages mean lower obesity.

Transcript

♪♪ The Public News Service daily newscast, November the 15th, 2024.

I'm Mike Clifford.

President-elect Donald Trump will dominate former presidential candidate and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

That from Politico.

They report the pick which will roil many health experts comes after Trump promised to let Kennedy go wild with health and food policy in his administration after Kennedy dropped his own presidential bid to endorse Trump.

Politico notes Kennedy may still face a steep slope to confirmation after his years-touting debunked claims that vaccines cause autism.

Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said Kennedy will be treated like all other nominees.

A new federal data show aggravated assaults are up in Kentucky by 7.2 percent, but other types of violent crime have gone down.

Overall, violent crime in Kentucky remains much lower compared to the nation as a whole, says Ashley Spaulding, research director at the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy.

When you compare 2023 to that 2021 peak for violent crime, we see it's come down significantly since then.

A 2022 Bureau of Justice Statistics survey found younger people and people with lower incomes are far more likely to report being the victim of a violent crime than higher-income people.

Nadia Ramligan reporting.

According to the Pew Research Center, at least 60 percent of U.S. adults have said they believe there's more crime nationally than there was the year before, despite an ongoing downward trend in crime rates.

Next, in New York City, where residents approved three of Mayor Eric Adams' four charter reforms in last week's election, but how many realized what they were voting for?

Critics of the reform proposals say the language on the ballots may seem harmless, but each proposition expands the power of the mayor or a city agency.

For instance, Proposition 3 requires more public notice on public safety legislation, but it also lets agencies hold hearings bypassing the city council.

Based on voters' feedback, Perla Silva with Make the Road New York says the wording of each initiative made them hard to interpret.

Three to six was very confusing.

They just did not really understand what that meant, the wording around it.

The language was just not clear to them.

It just sounded like it was supporting and it was going to be helping city council.

She adds voters were equally confused by Proposition 2, which many assumed would lead to cleaner parks and offer more parks for kids.

Instead, it increases the policing of homeless people and street vendors.

A Data for Progress survey before the election also showed 65 percent of likely voters hadn't heard about these charter reforms.

I'm Edwin J. Vieira.

The New York Civil Liberties Union finds police stops have risen since Adams became mayor, although almost 70 percent of people stopped have been innocent.

At the same time, research shows violent crimes fell when police stops did as well.

This is Public News Service.

Construction is scheduled to begin early next year on improvements to railroad infrastructure in and around Springfield, Illinois.

The city has received a $157 million consolidated rail infrastructure and safety improvements grant through the Federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Act.

Nate Bottom, the chief city engineer for Springfield, says the money will go for a number of projects designed to improve safety and rail service across the region.

It's been one of the bottlenecks for the high-speed rail between Chicago to St. Louis.

It's one track through the city of Springfield, so now it'll be dual track, and there will be a new Amtrak station, multimodal station, where we'll have bus transfers as well as a parking structure.

The grant is part of $2.4 billion in Federal Railroad Administration funding for 122 rail projects in 41 states and Washington, D.C.

I'm Mark Richardson.

Meantime, if state and local governments want healthier populations, new findings suggest they should be more aggressive in tackling income equality, and Nebraska organization feels the approach is on point.

A new study from Johns Hopkins University looked at obesity levels in more than 3,000 counties across the country.

The places with minimum wages of at least $9 an hour had greater success in reducing obesity rates.

Christine Carey helps address economic justice with the group Stand In for Nebraska.

She says other data routinely show that healthier foods tend to cost more, so the connection made in this new research is pretty clear.

Raising the minimum wage is obviously a way to increase access to healthier food.

You just have more money to spend on it.

In 2022, Nebraska voters approved a gradual increase in the state's minimum wage.

At the same time, the state doesn't fare well in obesity rankings.

Carey sees a chance for numbers to improve as wages go up, but she notes not all communities have stores that sell healthy foods, potentially hindering that progress.

I'm Mike Moen.

Finally, from our Eric Teggett Off, the fight against infections faces an increasing threat, the rise of superbugs resistant to antibiotics.

The issue already impacts nearly 3 million and kills 35,000 Americans per year.

It poses a threat to the effectiveness of antibiotics going forward if the problem is not addressed.

But Dr. Paul Pottinger, a University of Washington professor of infectious diseases, says this is an avoidable disaster.

He notes that it's a natural part of evolution.

Over time, inevitably, microorganisms will become resistant to the antibiotics that we use, and that means that we need to have a plan.

We need something that's gonna move forward and help us deal with this threat.

Pottinger says Congress is considering a bipartisan piece of legislation that could help address the shortage of drugs to treat resistant diseases.

This is Mike Clifford, and thank you for wrapping up your week with Public News Service.

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