News
The Florida county announced plans on Aug. 30 to distribute a new round of rental assistance starting on Oct. 1. Eligible applicants could receive as much as $20,000 or 18 months of assistance.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which was supported by several state Congress members, allots $8 billion for the expansion of hydrogen use in at least four regional hubs; some argue West Virginia should host one of them.
Srivan Krishna, regarding the Carroll school district’s decision to reject two signs that stated “In God We Trust,” with one sign’s text displayed over a rainbow background and the other’s text in Arabic, claiming that it already had enough signs for its buildings. Krishna was testing the Southlake, Texas, school district and the recently adopted Texas law that requires public schools to display a poster bearing the U.S. motto, “In God We Trust”; the law requires that the posters include both the state and U.S. flags and that the schools do not pay for them. (NPR — Aug. 31, 2022)
Access to broadband Internet can dramatically alter quality of life and economic prospects in rural areas, including long-neglected tribal nations. New federal funding is helping to fill some of the gaps in the high-speed network.
Coffee County let outsiders copy confidential voting data without any scrutiny from legislators. Meanwhile, Fulton County has been under investigation for more than a year. One key difference may be who they voted for in 2020.
Colorado’s Sen. Kevin Priola announced on Aug. 22 that he had switched political parties, citing the Republican Party’s lack of outrage to the Jan. 6 insurrection, but that he would not change his votes based on his new party.
A startup has created smart labels for household products that collect data about the item’s use and enables automatic reordering. About 60 percent of Internet of Things devices were consumer devices in 2020.
Gov. Janet Mills and other clean-car advocates argue that obstacles, like cost and availability, can prevent widespread adoption of zero-emission vehicles and the state’s transition must not leave out rural and low-income residents.
New York State Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett, regarding the growing number of counties across the state that have found poliovirus in its wastewater, suggesting that the virus is spreading. All three of the counties that have found evidence of poliovirus have low vaccination rates, with some ZIP codes in Rockland County having vaccination rates as low as 37 percent. (Ars Technica — Aug. 29, 2022)
San Francisco has a brand-new park overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge and the bay. Its history is rooted in an attempt to make road traffic safer.
In the state and local gov tech industry, about one-sixth of funding opportunities are for cloud computing services. Overall, the use of cloud services in the past decade has risen across all industries.
As with pension fund divestment policies, it’s tempting for states and local governments to blacklist companies over their public policy stances. But it’s the taxpayers who are likely to be the collateral damage losers.
Since COVID, deaths and injuries of cyclists and pedestrians are at their highest in four decades. Meanwhile, motorists complain downtown driving has worsened with fewer car lanes available.
The growing officer shortage is colliding with the highest rates of gun violence Philadelphia has seen in generations. Critics argue local policies, such as city residency requirements, have made the situation worse.
Fuel, energy and food costs have soared while teacher shortages have increased pressure to raise wages. The financial problem has hit as education emerges as a central issue in the Iowa governor’s race.
Car-Crazy Los Angeles now has more train and bus riders than the San Francisco Bay Area. As of June 2022, Los Angeles County has recovered 71 percent of its ridership compared to 55 percent in the Bay Area.
Christopher Gilmore, principal of Westwood High School in Mesa, Ariz., commenting on the shortage of math teachers as the school year begins. According to one national survey by Education Week, nearly three-fourths of principals and district officials said this summer that the number of teaching applicants was not enough to fill their open positions. Other surveys released this year have suggested that parents are deeply concerned about staffing and that many more teachers are eyeing the exits. (The New York Times, Aug. 30, 2022)
It seems logical that we would be rushing to turn vacant office buildings into apartments and condos. So far it’s not happening on a large scale, but there are reasons to think it’s in our urban future.
Community-based organizations know how to register voters and increase census participation. Reaching out block by block, even door to door, they can be just as effective in boosting vaccination rates.
Data collected from sewage water generates more accurate and economical information on COVID-19 activity than reports that depend on positive test results. But funding for this type of analysis hasn’t been reliable.
The 33-year ordeal of Salman Rushdie came to head with a knife attack at a venerable cultural venue in upstate New York. That the onstage stabbing took place in America is a grim reminder of the need for eternal vigilance in defending the First Amendment.
The vast majority of ghost guns recovered by law enforcement nationwide are built from parts made by Polymer80, which has managed to evade laws forbidding the manufacture of unserialized gun parts.
Diesel-powered school buses produce more than 5 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. EV school buses eliminate harmful pollutants and cost less to maintain than diesel buses. But they aren’t cheap.
Gabrielle Perry, a 29-year-old epidemiologist in New Orleans, regarding the obstacles that families, especially Black families, experience toward generational wealth, which, Perry says, acts as a societal tax on Black people. Perry, who has $135,000 of student loan debt and expects $20,000 of that to be wiped out under the plan announced this week by President Biden, is grateful for the relief but is disappointed the president hasn’t decided to clear all student debt. (Associated Press — Aug. 26, 2022)
The Republican secretary of state claims that the biggest threat to the state’s elections is not fraud, but the people who are claiming election fraud exists and the danger that those conspiracy theories create.
Connecticut gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski criticized Gov. Ned Lamont over the lack of transparency and the increasing costs of the offshore wind redevelopment project in New London.
The tech company has partnered with the trucking company Daimler to increase its fleet of autonomous semitractor-trailers to 60 vehicles running on I-45 between Dallas and Houston.
Most Read
