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–Miami International Airport (MIA) is now home to two autonomous cleaning vehicles that help polish the floors of busy Concourse D.
–According to a press release announcing the program, the robots are programmable, self-driving machines that are capable of running for more than four hours at a time.
-The robots can polish up to 80,000 square-feet of terminal floor space in four hours, which is roughly equivalent to two football fields.
–C&W Services runs facilities maintenance at MIA and they claim the robots will free up time for their 672 on-site cleaning professionals to focus on other projects.
–“We’re excited to launch these customer-oriented cleaning initiatives at MIA, which is one of C&W Services’ most prominent U.S. partners,” said Milagros Diaz, Operations Director for C&W Services at MIA said in a statement.
–MIA sees over 44 million visitors each year and over 125,000 per day. It is one of the busiest airports in the United States.
——Here’s Something Completely Different: ——
The TV Weatherman Who Is Trying To Save Miami From Drowning
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Racist Attack Targeted At American University Black Sorority
American University in Washington, D.C. is at the center of its second racially driven hate act in eight months.
According to a statement released by the university, bananas were left hanging from what was designed to look like nooses on three separate locations on campus.
The bananas were “marked with the letters AKA”, the letters of a predominantly black sorority.
Last September, similar incidents occurred at American including an episode when someone threw a rotten banana at a student..
Students took to social media to express their anger with the racially charged incident.
It’s finals week and instead of studying, black girls are wondering who is going around scaring them, THIS IS UNFAIR! @AmericanU
— calkie $wag di$trict (@Calkielator_97) May 1, 2017
@AmericanU These incidents have happened over and over again and AU management pretend nothing happened. Shame on @AmericanU .
— luka (@lukssii) May 1, 2017
i’m gonna be fucking sick @AmericanU if this keeps happening i might as well leave this school now. you must not need my money.
— shut up and listen (@kandall44) May 1, 2017
@annamgardner_ @AmericanU this echoes an incident in September and anyone responsible DOES NOT belong in our community.
— Chelsea Cirruzzo (@ChelseaCirruzzo) May 1, 2017
@AmericanU Those responsible should be expelled and brought up on criminal charges. Absolutely unacceptable.
— Kenny Lorber (@KMLorbz) May 1, 2017
American’s student body president Taylor Dumpson (who happens to be the college’s first black woman SGA president) released a statement about the incident.
“It is disheartening and immensely frustrating that we are still dealing with this issue after recent conversations, dialogues, and town halls surrounding race relations on campus,” Dumpson said. “But this is exactly why we need to do more than just have conversations but move in a direction towards more tangible solutions to prevent incidents like these from occurring in the future.”
Cover Photo Credit: American University/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
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Ole Miss Students Want To Take Down Racist Mississippi State Flag, Will Rally Friday
Student groups at the University of Mississippi in Oxford will rally Friday afternoon in order to bring attention to a cause they believe is worthy of national attention the removal of the state flag from the campus.
Mississippi is the only state in the Union that still has the Confederate battle flag as part of the official state flag. Georgia was the second to last state to rid its state flag of Confederate iconography and did so in 2003.
At 12:30 CST on Friday, numerous progressive student groups and those associate with minority including the campus chapter of the NAACP will be rallying in front of a well-known Confederate Statue in the Circle, a historical central location on campus.
The organizations, which include the Black Student Union, UM Pride Network, College Democrats and others want the Associated Student Body, the student government of Ole Miss to pass a resolution that would call for the removal of the state flag from campus.
Allen Coon is a student senator and also the president of the campus College Democrats chapter. He authored the resolution and has helped organize the event.
As a native Mississippian, the fight is a personal one for Coon.
“I love my state and I care about it deeply. But every-time, I see that flag it reminds me that we are promoting a perspective that led to a war of injustice and pain,” Coon said in a phone interview with Rise News. “And that’s not representative of my Mississippi and that’s why it has to change.”
According to the Daily Mississippian, there are 49 student senators in the Associated Student Body. That would mean that at least 25 of them would have to vote in favor of taking down the flag in order for the resolution to pass. Coon told Rise News that it would be a difficult fight to win the vote in the student senate.
“If this resolution fails, then it will bring a lot more scrutiny on the campus from a national perspective,” Coon said. “The very test of a symbol is that it should be divisive. On that basis alone, it is grounds enough to take down the flag.”
“When people think of Ole Miss I don’t want them to think, ‘oh that’s a racist school,’” Buka Okoye, the president of the Ole Miss NAACP said in an interview with Daily Mississippian reporter Dawn Boddie. “Therefore, what are we doing to rid ourselves of that image?”
According to the Mississippi Business Journal, five other public universities in the state do not currently fly the official state flag: Delta State University, Mississippi State University, Jackson State University, Mississippi Valley State University and Alcorn State University.
Even if student government passes the resolution, it will be up to campus administrators to make the final decision.
Rise News is looking for a few Ole Miss students to report for us during the rally on Friday afternoon. If you are interested then please email [email protected] with a phone number and we will get back to very quickly.
Read: Proposed Ole Miss student government resolution to take down state flag on campus
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Cover Photo Credit : /\ \/\/ /\/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
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Alabama Starman Catches Alien Migraine (Or Something Like That)
By Chance Willie
An anonymous Tuscaloosa, AL stargazer reported an almost poetic UFO sighting early Tuesday morning.
The account appeared on a message board hosted by the UFO Stalker website, which catalogs UFO sightings from around the country.
The sighting allegedly occurred when the observer stepped outside to smoke a cigarette and was greeted by an object resembling a shooting star darting across the sky, abruptly changing directions and leaving trails of green and orange light in its wake.
The observer reports being stricken by a mysterious headache as the object shot away into the dusk. Whether the account was fact or fiction, it makes for an interesting read.
RISE NEWS has reached out to the website to try to get in touch with the person who made the post. We’ll update with any additional information.
Here’s the full account posted to the website:
“At exactly 4:01 A.M. I went outside on my balcony to smoke a cigarette. I spend a lot of time looking up at the sky at night, and I have seen many shooting stars. Shootings stars move extremely fast and appear to zoom across your range of vision in an instant. The “light” I saw tonight did no such thing. While it did vanish in an instant, it did not zoom across my range of vision. Directly in the center of the sky, what appeared to be a large aircraft, lit up in the darkness–without making a sound. It instantly propelled itself into the distance leaving behind a momentary trail of green and orange light. What was most unusual about this sighting was that the object changed direction. The object also moved much more quickly than any shooting star that I have ever seen. I could not determine its exact location or distance. However, initially after lighting up, the size of the object appeared three to four times larger than the stars in the sky. This means that the object was either much larger and/or much closer than our closest stars. After the incident, I felt slightly uncomfortable–as if I had a headache, but only in the front half of my brain.”
Ever see anything strange? Either in the sky or on a city council balance sheet? Send us a news tip to [email protected]
H/T to Tuscaloosa News reporter Stephen Dethrage
Cover Photo Credit: maxime raynal/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
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