Local governments spending pandemic relief funds; female soldiers face harassment; giraffe born without spots | Hot off the Wire podcast

On this version of Hot off the Wire:

» Federal officials estimate that local governments now have spending plans in place for most of the money they received under a prominent pandemic relief law. The American Rescue Plan, passed two years ago, provided $350 billion of flexible aid to be divided among thousands of governments.

» Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is accusing Facebook of putting profits over people’s safety during Canada’s wildfire emergencies. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced earlier this summer it would keep its promise to block news content in Canada on its platforms in response to a new law that requires tech giants to pay publishers for linking to or otherwise repurposing their content online.

» A new report says female soldiers face rampant sexism, sexual harassment and other gender-related challenges in male dominated Army special operations units.

» The Air Force says no harmful levels of carcinogenic PCBs were found inside the launch facilities at a nuclear missile base in Wyoming. F.E. Warren Air Force Base is among three bases the service is investigating as it looks for possible causes for the number of cancers being reported among its nuclear missile community.

» Lawyers and unions representing rail workers say there is a clear pattern across the industry of railroads retaliating against workers who report safety violations or injuries on the job.

» A giraffe born without spots at a northeastern Tennessee zoo may be plain, but she’s anything but ordinary. The female reticulated giraffe was born July 31 at the family-owned Brights Zoo in Limestone, a rural community in northeastern Tennessee.

» A new study shows a promising procedure to treat severe injuries in one eye by using stem cells from the other. Researchers take a small biopsy from the healthy eye, grow and expand the stem cells in a lab and then transplant them into the injured eye.