Christopher Milam's List: Researching Credible Connections

• In Detroit, a break in a 30-inch main flooded a southwest neighborhood on Tuesday, turning streets into streams and stalling cars in water above their hubcaps.
• Midwest, South and Northeast has forced cities and states to put road crews on double shifts and step up purchases of asphalt, trying to keep up with an epidemic of potholes
• also bought and spread so much salt that there is a shortage in the Mid-Atlantic States
• Cities still do not have a lot of cash available, so this particular storm season is having a really severe impact on their budgets,” said James Brooks, a director for community development and infrastructure at the National League of Cities
• things are too often overlooked when politicians want to spend money
• Stephanie A. Miner, the Syracuse mayor, said such
• You don’t cut ribbons for new water mains, but that’s really what matters,
• South Carolina officials estimated that a single weather system last month drained $2 million from the state’s budget
• Chicago budgeted $20 million for 2014 to plow snow and salt roads, but it has already spent $25 million
• Transportation ordinarily spends about $15.7 million a year clearing roads of snow, but “right now we’re already up to $21.8 million,” said Ted Talbot, a department spokesman.

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• New York Times. 1/9/2014, Vol. 163 Issue 56376, pD2-D2. 1/2p
• The article presents an interview with William B. Rose, senior researcher at the University of Illinois and author of the book "Water in Buildings: An Architect's Guide to Moisture and Mold", who discusses about the strategies in addressing the various problems on water-pipes during winter

• The first step was to unionize the Volkswagen
• the U.A.W. lost
• In a news conference, Mr. King conveyed anger and bafflement at the results.
• “We are outraged that people in the political arena decided that they were going to threaten workers and that they were going to threaten the company,” Mr. King said. “The threats against the workers were what shifted things.”
• Chattanooga used to have scores of textile mills and metal foundries, many of them unionized. When they closed in recent decades — the textile mills because of foreign competition, the foundries because of pollution problems — many townspeople blamed labor unions, he said.
• One reason the U.A.W. lost was that many VW workers said they already felt that they were paid well and treated well, leading them to question why they needed a union and to pay union dues.
• Mr. King said his union, long known for contentiousness and strikes, was turning a new leaf and supporting cooperation to help automakers succeed. But many anti-union workers said they still saw the U.A.W. as a force that would inevitably lead to confrontations.

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• New York Times. 1/29/2014, Vol. 163 Issue 56396, pB1-B2. 2p. 3 Black and White Photographs.
• The article discusses the United Automobile Workers' (U.A.W.) unionization effort aimed at workers at automobile company Volkswagen's (VW) factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee as of January 28, 2014. Topics addressed include outside business organizations and politicians' efforts to oppose the unionization, as well as Volkswagen's possible approval of a union in order to establish a works council at the factory.

• In Maryland, the General Assembly is considering a bill that would require state colleges and universities to administer anonymous surveys on sexual assaults to create a clearer picture on the number of such incidents on campuses.
• “Every university was struggling on its own to try and figure out how to handle this problem,” University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan told National Public Radio. “If we at least share ideas with each other, we've got a better chance of coming up with a good solution.”
• “Victims have not been taken seriously, and I think they're finally just tired of it,” Princeton Vice Provost Michele Minter told NPR.
• Colleges are required under federal law to collect and share information about such crimes. But the White House report shows just 12 percent formally report them

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• New York Times. 1/23/2014, Vol. 163 Issue 56390, pA18-A18. 1/3p
• The article reports on a task force of senior administration officials created by U.S. President Barack Obama in January 2014 to address the prevalence of rape and sexual assaults in colleges and universities and to monitor the compliance of these institutions to their legal obligations.

• Ending their occupation of City Hall in Kiev, Ukrainian protesters withdrew from the large granite building on Sunday — but then quickly threatened to take it back if the authorities did not immediately fulfill a pledge to drop all criminal charges against political activists.
• roughly 2,000 criminal cases against protesters must be closed.
• neither side wants to return to the violent clashes that killed at least three protesters last month
• Many of the protesters who left City Hall on Sunday said they disagreed with the decision to vacate the building. The decision had been made by opposition leaders as part of an amnesty deal with the authorities aimed at defusing a crisis that a former Ukrainian president, Leonid M. Kravchuk, said last month had pushed the country to “the brink of civil war.”

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• Wall Street Journal - Eastern Edition. 1/23/2014, Vol. 263 Issue 18, pA6-A6. 1/2p. 1 Color Photograph.
• The article discusses the deaths of at least two protesters during a police crackdown on antigovernment demonstrations in Kiev, Ukraine in January 2014, focusing on violent clashes and Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych's decision to hold talks with the leaders of three opposition parties.

• This city’s ban on gun shops violates the Constitution, a federal judge ruled on Monday
• “The stark reality facing the city each year is thousands of shooting victims and hundreds of murders committed with a gun,”
• Chicago, which has wrestled with gang-related violence and more killings in recent years than in the larger cities of New York and Los Angeles, had for decades banned handguns within city limits. But in 2010, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the city went too far, prompting leaders here to settle for new limits, including outlawing the sale of firearms in the city.
• Last year, a federal appeals court decision forced state lawmakers to allow residents to carry concealed weapons in Illinois, and the state has begun accepting applications to do so.

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• A federal judge in Chicago ruled on Monday that a local law banning the sale of firearms within the city limits is unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang wrote in his 35-page ruling, according to the Chicago Tribune, that the gun ban "goes too far" by prohibiting legal buyers and dealers from sales and purchases.
• The 2010 ordinance was put in place after the Supreme Court struck down the city's previous gun ban, maintaining restrictions against who could purchase firearms in the city. After it was enacted, three Chicago residents filed a lawsuit against the city, saying the ordinance violated their Second Amendment right to bear arms.