Six minutes of news from around the nation.

Biden says Israel and Lebanon agree to proposal to end conflict with Hezbollah; New survey shows a shift toward 'Indigenous' over 'American Indian;' Tribal leaders call syphilis outbreak public health emergency; Northwest AR development leads to housing crisis for educators.

Transcript

The Public News Service Daily Newscast, November the 27th, 2024.

I'm Mike Clifford.

First, from CNN, the Israeli Security Cabinet Tuesday voted to approve a ceasefire deal in Lebanon, potentially bringing an end to more than a year of cross-border skirmishes with Hezbollah.

CNN reports President Joe Biden said the agreement is designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities.

The deal will be effective starting at 4 a.m. local time on Wednesday.

Prior to news of the agreement, Israel's military said it bombarded Beirut's southern suburbs 20 times in two minutes on Tuesday.

And a new survey of Native American teens and young adults highlights a growing preference for the term "indigenous" rather than being referred to as "American Indian."

Researchers from the Aspen Institute's Center for Native American Youth surveyed close to 10,000 Native Americans under age 24, including a large contingent from California.

The Center's Cheyenne Runzebov says the term "Native American" is still dominant. 53 percent of Native youth prefer the word "Native American," and only 7 percent prefer the word "American Indian."

We continue to see that 7 percent going down.

And what we continue to see uptick is the word "indigenous."

The report, called "Center Us," also found that many Native youth are apathetic towards U.S. elections and disappointed in the rate of change.

I'm Suzanne Potter.

And sticking with the tribal news beat, South Dakota leads the nation in a surge of syphilis cases in recent years, according to reporting from KFF Health News.

Tribal leaders who are taking the brunt of the impact have called for federal agencies to declare an emergency to no avail.

South Dakota Department of Health data show about 650 documented cases of syphilis in the state so far this year. 176 of those were among Native American people, or 73 percent of cases in a group that makes up just 9 percent of the population.

Megan Curry-O'Connell with the Great Plains Tribal Leaders Health Board and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation says the epidemic started about the same time COVID did, when public health departments were already stressed.

But federal resources could still help.

Generally just increasing the staff and resources available to have boots on the ground for people to go do contact tracing, to talk to people about syphilis, make sure they get treated, treat their sexual partner.

That is what you need to contain an outbreak.

O'Connell says penicillin is a commonly used cure for syphilis, which often goes undiagnosed because symptoms of the sexually transmitted infection look different from other STIs.

They may be limited to feeling under the weather or having a rash.

The outbreak has disproportionately hurt Native Americans in the Great Plains and Southwest.

According to the Great Plains Tribal Epidemiology Center, syphilis rates among Native Americans in its region soared by nearly 2,000 percent from 2020 to 2022.

This story was produced with original reporting from Jasmine Orozco Rodriguez for KFF Health News.

I'm Kathleen Shannon with...

This is Public News Service.

People may find it hard to believe that school teachers in Northwest Arkansas fall into what's called the Alice community.

We get more in this Arkansas Advocate went through Rockefeller Foundation, Arkansas News Service collaboration.

Alice stands for asset limited, income constrained and employed, which means that although people are working, they don't earn enough money to cover their bills.

Freelance reporter Jordan Hickey with the Arkansas Advocate spoke with a school teacher in Bentonville who has a second job delivering groceries to supplement her income.

This is somebody who's in their early 30s, mid 30s with a master's degree.

This is not the sort of person who should be struggling, who should be going out and delivering groceries.

Starting salaries for school teachers in Bentonville are a little over $54,000, but housing prices in the area have continued to increase.

I'm Freda Ross reporting.

And hundreds of former North Carolina college students are back on track to getting their degrees thanks to an innovative program called Project Kitty Hawk.

The project started in 2023 and has re-enrolled more than 1700 students who started but left college and are now on their way to graduation.

The re-enrollment program is an affiliate of the University of North Carolina system and allows students to pick up where they left off at any of 10 UNC campuses around the state.

Andrew Kelly runs Project Kitty Hawk.

He says that students leave college for various reasons.

One thing those individuals often have in common, many of them wish that they could find a way to come back and finish that credential because it's often what stands in the way of getting promoted from them finding a family sustaining wage in their work and from really launching that career.

Kelly says they contact former students who never finished, walk them through options for when and how to resume their studies and help them find a UNC institution that fits their needs.

I'm Mark Richardson.

Finally, a lack of animal welfare laws is leading to pain and suffering in America's factory farms.

Close to 99 percent of livestock is now raised in industrial type facilities where efficiency and profitability take precedence over animals' well-being.

Associate Professor of Law at Vermont Law and Graduate School Delciana Winders says while more than a dozen states have banned what are deemed torture-like confinement for these animals, there is no federal law protecting them from abuse.

If most people were aware that the animal they're sitting down to eat couldn't move throughout their entire life, just to give one example, I don't think they would want to support that.

Winders says the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act requires animals be knocked unconscious before they're killed, but corporations that run factory farms are lobbying for the law to be weakened in order to speed up meat production.

This story was based on original reporting by Seth Milstein at Sentient.

I'm Catherine Carley.

This is Mike Clifford for Public News Service.

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