Current Event Quiz 2.1

1. Council members of the Austin Park Foundation receive two VIP passes, two regular passes, and 3-day parking passes, all at no cost, for Austin City Limits. The passes are intended for the council members and their staff and are "for work purposes only." Two of the council members, Rick Cofer and Don Zimmerman, rejected the passes. Cofer said that he thought that the passes were an unnecessary expense and that he would feel uncomfortable accepting them. Zimmerman thought that the free passes violated a policy saying that council members aren't allowed to accept “any gift or favor, that might reasonably tend to influence that individual in the discharge of official duties" although Sabine Romero of the city's ethics and compliance division stated that taking the passes was okay because it “provides access to the event for ‍city representatives for municipal purposes.” Another council member, Ann Kitchen, used the passes with her staff because she believes it is "important for her office to understand how the festival operates." Yet another council member, Ora Houston, gave her passes to 311 operators filling in for a staff member on maternity leave as a thank you. 
I'm not particularly bothered by this "perk." I think that if they're part of the city's parks department, why shouldn't they attend an event that concerns Austin's largest park?

2. Oklahoma has halted all executions after realizing that they had been sent the wrong drug, rather than the one used for executions. Many states have come up with backup solutions if they cannot obtain the proper drugs, such as Tennessee, with the electric chair, and Utah, with firing squads. Midazolam is a drug that, combined with hydromorphone, was used to execute an inmate in Ohio. The inmate in question reportedly struggled for several minutes before dying, raising questioning over the humanity of using the drug to execute and of capital punishment overall. 

3. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu is preventing his ministers from visiting a holy site in Jerusalem used by Muslim worshippers, telling police to prevent them from going, in an attempt to ease violence and unrest. Both Arab and and Israeli ministers have expressed their displeasure with Netanyahu's decision. Muhanad Halabi is a Palestinian who had been defending the mosque on Facebook before he was shot dead by Israeli forces on Saturday. 

4. Svetlana Alexievich, a Belarusian writer and journalist, was awarded the Nobel prize in literature. Her most famous work, "War's Unwomanly Face" which was published in 1988, is about Soviet womwn who participated in World War II. Her winning the Nobel prize is a rarity because her work is mainly nonfiction, a mixture of literature and journalism. In her statement to the press, she says that the future holds a lot of work for her and that she does not consider her winning a Nobel prize to be the end of her career. 

5. Professor Emeritus Daniel S. Hamermesh has decided not to continue teaching at the university because of the campus's new concealed carry law. The reporter who wrote this article first became aware of his decision because of the Daily Texan, UT's student newspaper, who obtained a copy of the letter Hamermesh sent to the UT President. Hamermesh is the first professor at UT to leave based on the new law though he believes he will not be the last. He also stated that he had other opportunities to teach abroad. 

6. Tech: YouCam Makeup, virtual beauty kit
A new app allows you to try new makeup looks without ever actually having to put makeup on. Instead you upload a picture of your face onto the app and put on virtual makeup. The app also allows you to see what you look like with a different nose or an eye lift. 
To be honest, this seemed pretty irrelevant to me and it was obvious that the reporter who wrote this thought so too because it seemed lackluster and hastily done.

The articles in the extra sections are brief and often about stuff that no one really cares about. I think that they put stuff like this in the electronic edition, not as a perk, because it's not relevant enough to spend money on to print in the paper. I don't think it makes the Statesman a more viable product.