8 Things You Need To Know This AM — Oct 08 2015

Obama apologized to Doctors Without Borders for the deadly bombing of a hospital in Afghanistan.

The president called the head of Médecins San Frontières to say sorry for the U.S. military bombing of an MSF hospital in Kunduz. The bombing left 22 people dead, including a dozen members of the group's staff. MSF is asking that the incident be investigated as a war crime. (Reuters)

California passed a historic equal pay law that aims to protect women from the gender wage gap. California Governor Jerry Brown signed a new law that will impose some of the most progressive and stringent equal pay protections in the country. The California Fair Pay Act mandates equal wages for women who perform “substantially similar work” to their male counterparts within the same company, regardless of a difference in title or job location. The law also enshrines a worker’s right to discuss and compare their pay with peers without fear of retaliation from higher-ups. (Los Angeles Times)

Nicki Minaj called out Miley Cyrus’ hypocrisy and a “troublemaking” interviewer in her New York Times Magazine cover story. If that’s not your definition of a boss, you’re wrong. Say what you will about “Anaconda,” her “revealing” outfits, or how she isn’t a feminist, but Nicki Minaj has always demanded respect — even when it was inconvenient — and eschewed the pickle juice in her rise to the top. If you need proof, just read the latest New York Times Magazine, in which the rapper explains the real reason why she asked Miley what was good (“If you want to enjoy our culture...then you should also want to know what affects us, what is bothering us.”) and refuses to respond to a sexist line of questioning. After being asked if she “thrives off” the drama between label mate Drake and beau Meek Mill, Minaj let the interviewer have it: “Four grown-ass men are having issues between themselves and you’re asking me 'Do I thrive off drama?'...Women blame women for things that have nothing to do with them.” (Fader)

House Republicans still want to create a special subcommittee to investigate Planned Parenthood. Even though those controversial Planned Parenthood videos created by the anti-abortion organization Center for Medical Progress have been largely discredited for containing egregious footage, manipulation, and editing, House Republicans refuse to let them go. In its newest bid to attack women’s reproductive healthcare and defund Planned Parenthood, the House advanced a bill that would launch a new 13-member subcommittee dedicated to probing abortion clinics and “any other relevant matters with respect to fetal tissue procurement.” As Planned Parenthood’s executive vice president Dawn Laguens said, “It’s become very obvious that this is all part of a political agenda to make abortion illegal in this country.” (Washington Post)

Harvard’s national title-winning debate team was defeated by a group of New York prison inmates. If any big-time Hollywood producers are looking to make the next Dangerous Minds, you can thank some inmates from Eastern New York Correctional Facility for providing you with a ready-made plot. In a special event organized by the Bard Prison Initiative, which provides incarcerated people with the opportunity to obtain a college degree, the renowned Harvard College Debating Union was brought to compete with the prison’s own debate club, each arguing a position on undocumented students’ enrollment at U.S. public schools. The inmates handily defeated the Harvard students, just like they did with teams from the University of Vermont and West Point. (CNN)

Bobby Jindal, some politician guy, realized he wasn’t in the news and decided to blame single mothers and abortion for the Oregon shooting instead of, you know, the man-made contraption that shoots.

Not content with letting Ben Carson be the Republican presidential candidate with the worst, most garbage opinion on the Oregon shooting, Louisiana Governor and proud recipient of fifth place in Iowa polls Bobby Jindal wrote a blog post in which he names the real culprits behind mass shootings: abortion and single mothers. According to Jindal, “cultural rot” causes tragedies like these: “We fill our culture with garbage and we reap the result,” he wrote. Jindal reasons that if we didn’t suffer from “the breakdown of the family,” Chris Harper Mercer wouldn’t have been able to procure 13 guns, because more babies and fathers would be around to staff gun stores or something, we guess? (Huffington Post)

Starbucks created a secret club for Pumpkin Spice Latte fanatics. No offense, but we’d rather be in The Midnight Society. Starbucks is really milking every nutmeg-flavored drop out of the pumpkin spice latte craze. After heralding PSL’s return with a secret code that allowed insiders to order the beloved autumnal beverage before it even hit menus, Starbucks has now created an exclusive invite-only club for pumpkin paramours, the Orange Sleeve Society. Members of the circle are invited to flout their elite status by rocking a free PSL-themed coozy sleeve over their drinks. (Fortune)

Airbus has a come up with a great way to cram more passengers on its planes: making people sit on top of one another! The Rapture happened: This is hell on Earth. The last time you flew and the back of your airplane seat became the starter drum kit for a five-year-old boy from Des Moines, IA, you were probably convinced that travel couldn’t get any worse. French aircraft manufacturer Airbus really went above and beyond to prove that you were wrong. In a filed patent, Airbus revealed its plans to expand seating by creating a “mezzanine sitting area” to “make optimum use of the available space in a passenger cabin.” Translation: they want to stick seats above other passengers’ heads, where the overhead compartments usually are. (Wired)

For the first time ever, women are more likely to have a college degree than men, meaning we’re also more likely to groan and request a whole bottle of wine for ourselves whenever someone mentions student loans. Ladies, we’ve done it: We are, on average, more educated than men. Stick that feather in your cap and call it a derivative of the late Greek word “makaria” which means “food made from barley.” (That’s a fancy way to say “macaroni,” y’all.) For the first time since the Census Bureau began observing patterns in higher education in 1940, women are more likely to have a bachelor’s degree than men. In 2014, 30.2% of women had completed an undergraduate degree, compared to 29.9% of men. (Time)