News Room

When 12-year-old Nina Mones was in sixth grade last year, she struggled to keep up with her math class, getting stuck on improper fractions. And as the teacher pushed ahead with new lessons, she fell further and further behind. Then in the fall of 2019, her charter school, the Phoenix International Academy in Phoenix, brought in a program called Teach to One 360, which uses computer algorithms and machine learning to offer daily math instruction tailored to each student. Nina, now in seventh grade, flourished.

Large political gatherings in North Carolina that flout safety guidelines ahead of the 2020 elections have continued even as cases of COVID-19 rise across the state. That kind of event brought COVID-19 to the White House, resulting in President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump and some staff and party members — including N.C. Sen. Thom Tillis — testing positive for the coronavirus.

What’s expected to be an unprecedented election with historic participation, especially with mail-in voting, comes with serious election security concerns. An unlocked mailbox discovered by a guy walking his dog in Baltimore City and reports of people trying to collect completed mail-in ballots from voters in Anne Arundel County are two of the latest examples.

The Department of Labor’s present proceeding to safeguard the retirement future of beneficiaries of pension funds governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) is a welcome initiative. Parallel to its previous notice of proposed rulemaking “Financial Factors in Selecting Plan Investments” (RIN 1210-AB95),[1] the current proposed rule clarifies the requirements of ERISA in a rapidly changing investment landscape in which both asset managers and the non-financial interests seeking to influence them are in very different positions than in the era when the law was originally passed.