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Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday signed an official apology for harms caused by slavery and hundreds of years of discrimination against Black Californians. “Healing can only begin with an apology,” said Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer, who authored the apology bill, in a statement. “The state of California acknowledges its past actions and is taking this bold step to correct them, recognizing its role in hindering the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness for Black individuals through racially motivated punitive laws.” (Holden, 9/26)

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill (SB 1099) Wednesday prompted by a decade-long CBS News California investigation into California's newborn genetic biobank. We still won't know who is using your DNA for research, or what the research is for, but the California Department of Public Health must now reveal the number of newborn DNA samples that California is storing and the number of DNA samples that the state sells to researchers each year. (Watts, 9/26)

Boar's Head processing plants nationwide are now part of an ongoing law enforcement investigation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture disclosed Thursday, in the wake of a deadly outbreak blamed on some of the company's now-recalled deli meats. At least 59 hospitalizations and 10 deaths have been linked to a listeria strain traced back to Boar's Head products distributed from a now-shuttered plant the company ran in Virginia. (Tin, 9/26)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: A Few Rural Towns Are Bucking The Trend And Building New Hospitals

There’s a new morning ritual in Pinedale, Wyoming, a town of about 2,000 nestled against the Wind River Mountains. Friends and neighbors in the oil- and gas-rich community “take their morning coffee and pull up” to watch workers building the county’s first hospital, said Kari DeWitt, the project’s public relations director. “I think it’s just gratitude,” DeWitt said. (Tribble, 9/27)

Alabama executed convicted murderer Alan Miller on Thursday in the second-ever nitrogen-asphyxiation execution since the state pioneered the method which it says is less painful than lethal injections but human rights experts say may amount to torture. The 65-year-old shook, pulled against restraints and gasped for breath for several minutes before dying, journalists who witnessed the execution said. Miller was convicted for the 1999 murders of three men, including two co-workers, in a shooting spree at two offices in Pelham, Alabama. The state botched an attempt to execute Miller by lethal injection in 2022. (Allen, 9/26)

The cluster of executions this past week drew national scrutiny to the death penalty. All five of the cases raised varying issues that have long concerned abolition advocates, including executions that were allowed to proceed despite strong claims of innocence and methods that might be unconstitutionally cruel and unusual. (Bellware, 9/26)