Weekly Wrap 5.1.15: The 10 Best Stories You Missed This Week | Sojourners

Weekly Wrap 5.1.15: The 10 Best Stories You Missed This Week

1. Officers Charged in Freddie Gray's Death, Ruled a Homicide
“In an unexpected announcement Friday, Baltimore lead prosecutor Marilyn J. Mosby said there is “probable cause” to file criminal charges against police officers in the death of Freddie Gray ...” 

2. How Biased Is Your Feed?
Via Future Journalism Project Media Lab: A new study indicates that news and information gets more biased as it passes through social networks. … And given that half of Facebook and Twitter users consume news via those networks, our consumption and digestion of such “news” could take on that bias.

3. Nepal Earthquake: Up to 15,000 May Have Died, According to Army Chief
Amid public anger at government response to the massive earthquake and threats of disease, the country’s army chief painted a grim estimate of between 10-15,000 likely deaths in the wake of the weekend’s quake.

4. Lawmaker Considers Blocking Baltimore Protesters’ Food Stamp Benefits
“‘That’s an idea, and that could be legislation,’ [Maryland state legislator Patrick McDonough] said in response to a caller who asked if benefits could be revoked from parents of protesters. ‘I think that you could make the case that there is a failure to do proper parenting, and allowing this stuff to happen—is there an opportunity for a month to take away your food stamps?’”

5. Nigerian Soldiers Rescue 150 More Women and Girls from Boko Haram
The latest round of rescues is in addition to the more than 300 women and girls rescued earlier this week. It is unclear whether any of the women and girls are among the more than 200 schoolgirls who were kidnapped from Chibok more than a year ago.

6. The Most Racist Places in America, According to Google
“Interestingly, on the map … the most concentrated cluster of racist searches happened not in the South, but rather along the spine of the Appalachians running from Georgia all the way up to New York and southern Vermont.” View the map at the link.

7. PHOTOS: D.C. Marches in Solidarity with Baltimore
Said one police officer, helping to escort the crowd through the city, “I’m not always a police officer … I would have been out here walking too.”

8. What Makes a Method of Execution Constitutional?
On Thursday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the first major challenge to lethal injection in more than a decade. “The logic seems to be that since abolitionists failed to ban the death penalty itself, they could instead attack the methods used to carry it out, and thereby bring about the same result. It would be akin to legalizing guns, but outlawing bullets.”

9. WATCH: Ryan Adams Finally Covers Bryan Adams’ ‘Summer of 69’
“His acoustic rendition Tuesday at Ryman Auditorium comes almost 13 years after he memorably booted a man from his 2002 show at the same Nashville venue for rudely requesting he play 'Summer of '69.”

10. 10 Rules of Survival If Stopped by Police
This infographic, created by founder of the Dare to be King Project David Miller, was on display in the classroom of an afterschool program in east Baltimore on Thursday. (h/t Baltimore Sun reporter @EricaLG)

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