ZFJ founder. Oxford comma enthusiast. Unfortunately specializes in the government beat. Computer science and economics undergraduate student at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Aug. 3 (ZFJ) — Rafaela Vasquez, 49, pled guilty to endangerment on Friday, July 28, for failing to stop a fully self-driving car from hitting and killing a 49-year-old woman.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge David W. Garbarino sentenced her to three years of supervised probation. Her charge will be designated a misdemeanor once she completes her sentence.
On March 18, 2018, Vasquez was the backup driver for a test vehicle belonging to Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group (ATG).
EDISON, N.J., July 29 (ZFJ) — Dr. Edward Aldarelli was appointed superintendent of Edison Township Public Schools on Thursday, July 27.
The Edison Board of Education voted unanimously for him after four hours of candidate interviewing at a special meeting.
“Definitely, no doubt, absolutely yes,” said Board President Shannon Peng, topping off board member Mohin Patel’s “absolutely yes” and Jerry Shi’s “absolutely, absolutely yes.”
Aldarelli was “overwhelmed” that the board chose him to lead the district, which has over 16,000 students.
July 24 (ZFJ) — The U.S. Navy commissioned Independence-class littoral combat ship USS Canberra (LCS 30) at the Royal Australian Navy’s Fleet Base East in Sydney on Saturday, July 22, marking the first time a U.S. ship entered service at a foreign port.
It is the second American ship named for Australia’s capital. The first was a Baltimore-heavy class cruiser, renamed in honor of the Australian heavy cruiser HMAS Canberra, which was lost at the Battle of Savo Island in WWII when defending U.
July 16 (ZFJ) — The World Health Organization’s cancer research agency categorized non-sugar sweetener aspartame as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” (group 2B) based on “limited evidence” for causing cancer in humans on Friday, July 14. A WHO joint panel did not change its acceptable daily limit of 40 mg/kg body weight.
Aspartame is an artificial sweetener that has been widely used in foods and beverages since the 1980s as an alternative to sugar.
July 12 (ZFJ) — The Food and Drug Administration granted traditional approval to Eisai and Biogen’s Leqembi (lecanemab-irmb) 100 mg/mL intravenous injection on July 6. It is the first Alzheimer’s drug to clear this regulatory hurdle and aims to slow the disease’s progression.
“Today’s action is the first verification that a drug targeting the underlying disease process of Alzheimer’s disease has shown clinical benefit in this devastating disease,” said Teresa Buracchio, acting director of the Office of Neuroscience in FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.
July 10 (ZFJ) — The last possessor state, America, announced that it finished destroying its declared chemical weapons stockpile on Friday, July 7, marking the first time an international body verified the destruction of an entire category of declared weapons of mass destruction.
The stockpile was declared to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the international body responsible for implementing the Chemical Weapons Convention. The 1997 arms control treaty prohibits its 193 members from developing or stockpiling chemical weapons.
July 3 (ZFJ) — Affirmative action in college admissions violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, ruled the Supreme Court in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (20-1199) and SFFA v. University of North Carolina (21-707) on Thursday, June 29. The EPC prohibits racial discrimination by the government.
Reversing the lower courts’ decisions, the Court struck down the admissions programs used by Harvard and UNC by a 6-2 and 6-3 vote, respectively.
June 24 (ZFJ) — Lab-grown meat companies UPSIDE Foods and GOOD Meat announced on Wednesday that they received the final Agriculture Department approval required to sell their chicken in the United States.
The Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service issued grants of inspection for the companies’ manufacturing facilities: UPSIDE’s Engineering, Production, and Innovation Center and GOOD Meat’s demonstration plant in Alameda, California. GOOD Meat’s contract manufacturing partner JOINN Biologics also received a GOI.
EDISON, N.J., June 7 (ZFJ) — Smoke from Canadian wildfires drifted into the eastern and central U.S., tinting the sky orange and triggering air quality alerts on Wednesday.
Canadian authorities are battling “one of the worst wildfire seasons on record,” said Steven Guilbeault, Canadian minister of environment and climate change. The country is currently facing over 400 wildfires, with over half out of control, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.
May 28 (ZFJ) — The federal government can only regulate wetlands with “a continuous surface connection” to adjacent “waters of the United States” under the Clean Water Act (1972), ruled the Supreme Court on Thursday, May 25, in Sackett v. EPA (21-454).
The CWA is the primary federal law regulating water pollution and prohibits the “discharge of any pollutant,” including “chemical wastes,” “rock,” and “sand,” into “navigable waters,” defined as “the waters of the United States, including the territorial seas.
