Indian couple floats to their wedding in cooking pot after flood – National & International News – TUE 19Oct2021

Indian couple floats to wedding in cooking pot after floods. Nurses quitting hospital jobs to cash in as travelers. Trump sues to block Jan. 6 committee from seeing his records.

NATIONAL NEWS

Nurses quitting hospital jobs to cash in as travelers

Even since before the pandemic, U.S. hospitals have been experiencing a nursing shortage. The gap has only continued to grow as the pandemic has dragged on. The attrition rate among nurses means longer hours and less support for those that remain. They also now have to contend with the frustration that much of this added workload is down to low vaccination rates in their communities.

And on top of all this, staff nurses are now showing the ropes to travel nurses working in their  units. Travel nurses can earn up to $10,000 a month, several times what staff nurses are paid.

Theresa Adams is an ICU nurse who quit her job at an Ohio hospital to take on a lucrative stint as a travel nurse in California. Adams says of the building pressures at her old job, “I heard a lot of noise about, well, this is what you signed up for. No, I did not sign up for this”. Adams continues, “I did not sign up for the facility taking advantage of the fact that I have a calling. So there is a difference between knowing my calling and knowing my worth”.

A vicious cycle

The more staff nurses leave, the quickest solution to fill the vacancies is to hire more travel nurses. The higher pay for travel nurses is stretching many hospital budgets to the limit. Moreover, cohesion among nursing staff is low, causing patient care to suffer.

Some hospitals are now going so far as to import nurses from abroad to cover the shortfall. Michigan’s Henry Ford Health System has announced plans to bring in hundreds of nurses from the Philippines. Smaller hospitals are also looking to recruit internationally. Scott Lethi, the chief nursing officer at a hospital in Cookeville, TN, says it’s cheaper to recruit a nurse from abroad than to hire travel nurses.

Administrators also hope the foreign nurses will stay put longer. Another problem hospitals are having is that they invest time and money into training new nurses to work with specialized equipment, only for them to leave and become travel nurses.

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Trump sues to block Jan. 6 committee from seeing his records

Lawyers for Donald Trump have filed a lawsuit against the members of the Jan. 6 committee and the National Archives. Trump’s lawyers hope to block the National Archives from releasing documents relevant to the Capitol riot for the committee’s review.

Trump’s team is alleging that the Jan. 6 committee’s request for the records undermines executive privilege and calls the investigation “a vexatious, illegal fishing expedition”.

It is questionable whether Trump still has the standing to invoke executive privilege. Numerous legal experts have said that would be up to the sitting president, and Biden has said that he will not use executive privilege to block release of the requested documents.

Last week, former Trump strategist Steve Bannon cited executive privilege as his reason for refusing to appear before the committee. Experts who have weighed in say the fact that Bannon had not been part of Trump’s administration for years prior to the period in question means that his communications with Trump are in no way privileged. The committee will vote today on whether to ask the Justice Department to hold Bannon in criminal contempt.

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INTERNATIONAL NEWS

India: Couple floats to their wedding in cooking pot after floods

Heavy rains over the weekend in India’s Kerala province generated heavy destructive flooding. Water inundated streets and caused rivers to breach their banks. Several homes were swept away in the torrent and officials said yesterday at least 26 people had died. Many more are still missing.

One couple, healthcare workers Akash and Aishwarya, were set to be married yesterday, which was an auspicious date for weddings in the Hindu calendar. Unwilling to miss out, the couple borrowed a large aluminum cooking pot from a local temple. The couple seated themselves snugly inside the cooking pot while some (really good) friends gently guided them down a flooded street. The couple arrived and successfully completed the nuptials at a local temple, which was also partially flooded.

Prepare yourself for this to inspire a new viral wedding craze!

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