FURTHERMORE. . .

Honolulu Star Bulletin - A judge has ruled that the state is liable for monetary damages for failing to put native Hawaiians on the land to which they were entitled under the Hawaiian Home Lands Trust. . . The decision came in a class action lawsuit filed in 1999 on behalf of about 2,700 native Hawaiians who claimed they were not promptly awarded homesteads between 1959 and 1988. . . "Some of our clients waited more than 30 years or longer for a homestead award and some still are waiting," said attorney Tom Grande.

According to Fair Vote, the most highly partisan states in terms of presidential elections (the deepest red and the darkest blue) have been more likely to elect governors of the minority party, not the majority party. For example, five of the ten most Democratic states in the 2008 presidential elections today have Republican governors even though they voted comfortably for Democratic candidates for president in 2000, 2004 and 2008. Among these 10 strongly Democratic states in presidential races, only Delaware has had a Democratic governor throughout the decade, while two of these states (Rhode Island and Connecticut) have only elected Republican governors since the mid-1990s. Similarly, the 13 most heavily Republican states in the 2008 presidential election were all won by Republican presidential candidates in 2000-2008, but currently have seven Democratic governors.

Consumer Reports - The chemical Bisphenol A, which has been used for years in clear plastic bottles and food-can liners, has been restricted in Canada and some U.S. states and municipalities because of potential health effects. The Food and Drug Administration will soon decide what it considers a safe level of exposure to Bisphenol A which some studies have linked to reproductive abnormalities and a heightened risk of breast and prostate cancers, diabetes, and heart disease. Now Consumer Reports' latest tests of canned foods, including soups, juice, tuna, and green beans, have found that almost all of the 19 name-brand foods we tested contain some BPA. The canned organic foods we tested did not always have lower BPA levels than nonorganic brands of similar foods analyzed. We even found the chemical in some products in cans that were labeled "BPA-free."

With the recent election, Saint Paul joins Minneapolis and more than a half a dozen other jurisdictions around the United States and democracies around the world, including Ireland and Australia in using instant runoff voting. IRV, also known as Ranked Choice Voting, is a system by which voters rank candidates in order of preference, ensuring majority winners in single-winner races where there are more than two candidates on the ballot. Under IRV, voters cast their vote for their favorite candidate knowing that if no candidate gathers a majority of votes in the first round of counting their votes can count toward their second choice. Votes cast for the less popular candidates are not "wasted", but rather redistributed to more popular candidates, based on the voters' second choices, until one candidate emerges with a majority of votes.