By News Staff Reporter
Read the full article from Buffalo News, here.
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said today he believes a mask mandate for indoor gatherings in Erie County could be coming as soon as the end of this week because of the rise in Covid-19 cases.
“We will have an indoor mask requirement again, possibly by the end of the week,” Poloncarz said Wednesday during an Erie County Industrial Development Agency meeting.
By Jason DeParle
Read the full article from The New York Times, here.
The number of poor Americans is expected to fall by nearly 20 million from 2018 levels, a decline of almost 45 percent. The country has never cut poverty so much in such a short period of time, and the development is especially notable since it defies economic headwinds — the economy has nearly seven million fewer jobs than it did before the pandemic.
The extraordinary reduction in poverty has come at extraordinary cost, with annual spending on major programs projected to rise fourfold to more than $1 trillion. Yet without further expensive new measures, millions of families may find the escape from poverty brief. The three programs that cut poverty most — stimulus checks, increased food stamps and expanded unemployment insurance — have ended or are scheduled to soon revert to their prepandemic size.
By Jason DeParle
Read the full article from The New York Times, here.
The number of poor Americans is expected to fall by nearly 20 million from 2018 levels, a decline of almost 45 percent. The country has never cut poverty so much in such a short period of time, and the development is especially notable since it defies economic headwinds — the economy has nearly seven million fewer jobs than it did before the pandemic.
The extraordinary reduction in poverty has come at extraordinary cost, with annual spending on major programs projected to rise fourfold to more than $1 trillion. Yet without further expensive new measures, millions of families may find the escape from poverty brief. The three programs that cut poverty most — stimulus checks, increased food stamps and expanded unemployment insurance — have ended or are scheduled to soon revert to their prepandemic size.
By Phil McCausland
Read the full article from NBC News, here.
Advocates and experts have particularly celebrated the 15 percent increase in maximum funding for people receiving the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefit, or SNAP, commonly called food stamps. Once fearful that conservatives and the Trump administration would add work requirements to the benefit, they now warn that the padded benefit is scheduled to expire at the end of September and are pushing to make it permanent.
Many consider SNAP to be the backbone of the fight to address hunger in the U.S. but complain about the formula that calculates the amount of money hungry Americans get, especially with rising food costs and needs.
Without the expansion, the national average of the SNAP benefit per meal came to $1.97, even though the average meal cost was around $2.41, according to an analysis released this week by the Urban Institute, an economic and social policy think tank. SNAP’s maximum benefit last year without the expansion passed by Congress came up short of low-income meal costs in 96 percent of U.S. counties.
By Jeff Mason and Julie Steenhuysen
Read the full article from Reuters, here.
When President Joe Biden entered office, his administration made clear it intended to fight the COVID-19 pandemic by focusing on getting the country vaccinated. With the Delta variant of the coronavirus now raging and a large chunk of Americans rejecting vaccines, that strategy is under scrutiny.
By Peter Sullivan
Read the full article from The Hill, here.
Pfizer made waves earlier this month when it said it would be applying for Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorization for a third dose of its vaccine.
Still, it is not fully clear yet when and if a booster dose will be needed. It is possible booster shots will only be needed for more vulnerable people like the elderly or those with compromised immune systems.
By Neil Irwin
Read the full article from The New York Times, here.
But while there is no reason to expect a repeat of the huge disruption of 2020, the new variant puts at risk the kind of rapid recovery that has been underway for months. Just as major parts of the economy were figuring out how to return to full functioning, this may amount to throwing sand in the gears.
By Wright Thompson
Read the full article from The Alantic, here.
Emmett till was killed early on the morning of August 28, 1955, one month and three days after his 14th birthday. His mother’s decision to show his body in an open casket, to allow Jet magazine to publish photos—“Let the world see what I’ve seen,” she said—became a call to action. Three months after his murder, Rosa Parks kept her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, and she later told Mamie Till that she’d been thinking of Emmett when she refused to move. Almost 60 years later, after Trayvon Martin was killed, Oprah Winfrey channeled the thoughts of many Americans in evoking the memory and the warning of Emmett Till.
By Michael D Shear
Read the full article from The New York Times, here.
The Biden administration is considering requiring all federal employees to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or be forced to submit to regular testing, social distancing, mask requirements and restrictions on most travel, officials said Tuesday — a major shift in approach by President Biden that reflects the government’s growing concern about the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant.
By Andy Newman
Read the full article from New York Times, here.
New York City resumed the process of transferring thousands of homeless people from pandemic hotel rooms back to barracks-style group shelters on Monday, two weeks after a judge halted the moves on the grounds that the city was not giving adequate consideration to people’s health.