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The White House released a report Thursday contending that the United States’ war on poverty — a drive that started over 50 years ago to improve the social safety net for the poorest citizens of the world’s largest economy — is “largely over and a success,” contrasting with other reports on the nation’s poor.
The report, authored by President Donald Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, called for federal aid recipients to be pushed toward work requirements.
The report says poverty, when measured by consumption, has fallen by 90 percent since 1961. It also says that only 3 percent of Americans currently live under the poverty line.
“The timing is ideal for expanding work requirements among non-disabled working-age adults in social welfare programs,” according to the report. “Ultimately, expanded work requirements can improve the lives of current welfare recipients and at the same time respect the importance and dignity of work.”
U.N. report
The council’s report contrasts with a U.N. report on poverty in the U.S. that was released last month. That report said about 12 percent of the U.S. population lives in poverty, and that the U.S. “leads the developed world in income and wealth inequality.”
Phillip Alston, a U.N. adviser on extreme poverty and the author of the report, wrote in December 2017 that he believed Trump and his administration, along with U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, “will essentially shred crucial dimensions of a safety net that is already full of holes.”
In April, Trump signed an executive order outlining work mandates for low-income citizens on federal aid programs. These programs included Medicaid, which provides federal health insurance for low-income individuals, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides these low-income individuals with assistance in food purchasing.
Both programs were among those introduced in the 1960s, during the administration of then-President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat who coined the term “war on poverty” during his first State of the Union address.
Four state mandates
The Trump administration has already permitted four states — Kentucky, Indiana, Arkansas, and New Hampshire — to implement work requirement programs for Medicaid recipients, the first such restrictions enforced on the program. In June, however, a federal judge struck down Kentucky’s mandate, writing that the administration’s waiver “never adequately considered whether [the program] would in fact help the state furnish medical assistance to its citizens, a central objective of Medicaid.”
Anne Marie Regan, a senior staff attorney for the Kentucky Equal Justice Center, one of the organizations that successfully challenged the Kentucky waiver, told VOA that while she didn’t know the specifics of other states’ Medicare waivers, she thought similar challenges could be successful because of the administration’s insistence on work requirements.
Regan said her state’s proposal would have removed 95,000 people from health care coverage.
“The war on poverty is certainly not over,” Regan said. “There’s certainly still a great need for a safety net.”
In June, the U.S. House of Representatives narrowly passed a farm bill that includes work requirements for some adults who receive food assistance benefits. Every Democrat, along with 20 Republicans, voted against the bill, which is not expected to pass the Senate.
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From: MeNeedIt
Woody Guthrie’s Oklahoma hometown has doubled in population as thousands gather for a music festival in honor of the “This Land Is Your Land” singer.
The Journal Record reports that the town of Okemah jumps from about 3,000 to 6,000 people during the annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival.
Performers this year include Grammy winner Jason Mraz, Oklahoma’s Turnpike Troubadours, and Annie Guthrie, daughter of Arlo Guthrie and the granddaughter of Woody Guthrie.
Festival organizer Kay Thompson says it brings music fans from around the world to Okemah, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) east of Oklahoma City. Thompson says some come from as far away as Scotland and Australia.
Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen have cited Woody Guthrie as an influence.
This is the festival’s 21st year. It continues through July 15, 2018.
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From: MeNeedIt
A Kenyan wildlife official says seven critically endangered black rhinos are dead following an attempt to move them from the capital to a national park hundreds of kilometers away.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information, cited “negligence” in the deaths.
Prominent Kenyan conservationist Paula Kahumbu of WildlifeDirect calls the loss of the rhinos “a complete disaster.”
In moving the rhinos to Tsavo East National Park last month, the Kenya Wildlife Service said it hoped to boost the population there.
The organization, which has conducted numerous successful moves in the past, has not said how the rhinos died.
Conservationists in Africa have been working hard to protect the black rhino from poachers targeting the animal for its horn.
From: MeNeedIt
Football fans are watching the World Cup on multiple screens in bars, on their phones while they should be working, on TVs at home with their friends. One day, they could be following the action in 3D. Researchers at the University of Washington are developing a way to watch soccer games and other sporting matches as if you were in the stadium, by using augmented reality devices. Faiza Elmasry takes a look at the new technology in this report, narrated by Faith Lapidus.
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From: MeNeedIt
Temperatures around the world are rising as humans burn coal, oil and other fossil fuels for energy. Burning those fuels releases heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But it does more than that. CO2 is vital for plant growth. While having more of it sounds like a good thing, scientists are finding it is not always that simple. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more.
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From: MeNeedIt
Is your dorm room stifling hot? That might impact your memory.
New research shows that heat can affect even healthy young adults intellectually, with worse cognitive performance observed in students who slept in a non-air-conditioned room during a heat wave.
Researchers from Harvard University recruited 24 students who slept with air-conditioning and 20 who slept in rooms without AC before, during and after a Boston-area heat wave.
They recorded temperature, relative humidity, carbon dioxide and noise in each bedroom throughout the study.
The indoor temperature of the non-air-conditioned dorm averaged 26.3 C (79.3 F) compared with 21.4 C (70.5 F) in the dorm with air-conditioning.
Each participant wore an activity monitor to measure heart rate, perspiration and sleep quality. When the students woke up each morning, they were tested for how quickly and accurately they completed two cognitive tests that measured memory and reaction.
Researchers also noted how much water and caffeine the students consumed, and how long they spent outdoors each day.
After 12 days, researchers were surprised by the data.
“We found very significant effect of detrimental cognitive function among those students that didn’t have air-conditioning during this heat wave period,” said lead author Jose Guillermo Cedeno Laurent of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
The students who didn’t have air-conditioning performed significantly worse on the basic cognitive tests. In particular, going without AC during a heat wave hurt their reaction time when they had to make quick judgments.
“Their study really demonstrated that exposure to heat can have all these potential effects on people’s daily activities,” said Daisy Chang, an organizational psychologist at Michigan State University in East Lansing.
“A whole host of reasons could potentially explain this exposure effect,” Chang noted. “It’s not necessarily directly exposure to heat. [The heat] could have affected their sleep quality so they’re less rested, they have less energy, or mental resources, or ability to focus.”
The dorms without AC were louder at night because of fan and street noise, which could have disrupted sleep.
And while air-conditioned rooms can hold higher levels of carbon dioxide, which can have a negative impact on cognition, the students slept better in a cooler room.
“We find that heatwaves are impacting us all,” Cedeno said. “These … extend to those like the young and healthy university students. And that we find significant effects on the way they think – their cognitive functions.”
Extreme heat exposure is the biggest killer of all climate phenomena in the United States, killing 7,000 people between 1999 and 2010. Previous research focused on how hot weather affects at-risk populations like the elderly and the very young. And 2016 was the hottest year on record for the past 200 years.
From: MeNeedIt
Plans to launch the first NASA astronauts since 2011 to the International Space Station from the United States look set to be delayed due to incomplete safety measures and accountability holes in the agency’s commercial crew program, according to a federal report released on Wednesday.
SpaceX and Boeing Co are the two main contractors selected under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s commercial crew program to send U.S. astronauts to space as soon as 2019, using their Dragon and Starliner spacecraft respectively.
But the report from the Government Accountability Office said the issues could cause delays in the launch of the first crewed mission from U.S. soil by a private company and could result in a nine-month gap in which no U.S. astronauts inhabit the ISS.
“Boeing and SpaceX continue to make progress developing their crew transportation systems, but both contractors have further delayed the certification milestone to early 2019,” the report said.
“Without a viable contingency option for ensuring uninterrupted access to the ISS in the event of further commercial crew delays, we concluded that NASA was at risk of not being able to maximize the return on its multibillion dollar investment in the space station,” it added.
Test flights set for this year
Boeing said it was aiming for test flights this year. “Boeing is working with NASA to ensure that the CST-100 Starliner flies at the earliest time it is safe to do so,”
Boeing senior spokesman Jerry Drelling told Reuters in an email. Officials with SpaceX, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies, and NASA could not immediately be reached to comment.
In 2014, SpaceX and Boeing respectively received $2.6 billion and $4.2 billion contracts to build crew transportation systems under the commercial crew program, NASA’s flagship campaign to use the private sector for ISS missions.
In the report, NASA said it was working closely with its commercial partners to resolve the issues and was developing contingency plans in case of further delays.
Safety first
Before SpaceX and Boeing can launch the astronauts they must demonstrate their crew systems are safe for human spaceflight, according to NASA.
The GAO said it is tracking potential safety risks on the private companies’ crew capsules, including a Boeing Starliner abort system meant to eject the capsule from a hazardous rocket explosion, and a since-upgraded fuel valve on SpaceX’s Falcon rocket that triggered a costly 2016 launchpad explosion.
Since 2011, NASA has bought seats on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft months in advance to send U.S. astronauts to the space station from launchpads in Kazakhstan. U.S. launches before 2011 were handled by NASA.
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From: MeNeedIt
The acting head of the Environmental Protection Agency plans to keep cutting anti-pollution rules and regulations on industry.
Andrew Wheeler held his first meeting with EPA employees Wednesday after taking over the job for Scott Pruitt, who resigned last week amid allegations of ethics violations.
Wheeler, like Pruitt and President Donald Trump, believes the nation’s air and water can still be protected without what they say are job-killing regulations and pollution standards on industry.
Wheeler said the EPA would make cleaning up Superfund industrial waste sites and investing in water infrastructure priorities.
He promised to listen to all voices within the agency. “I value your input and your feedback, and you will find me and my team ready to listen,” Wheeler told staffers.
Wheeler also said he was proud of his work as a coal industry lobbyist — something that has attracted criticism from environmentalists and some Democrats. He said some people use the term “coal lobbyist” in a derogatory manner, but that he had nothing to be ashamed of.
Wheeler’s lobbying efforts primarily focused on better health care, pensions and benefits for retired coal miners.
Trump will nominate a new EPA chief in the coming months, and that person must meet Senate approval. Wheeler has said he is not interested in the job permanently.
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From: MeNeedIt
The air pollution problem isn’t going away. According to the World Health Organization, nine out of 10 people worldwide breathe polluted air and approximately 7 million die as a result of exposure to it each year. One creative startup has an artistic solution to an ugly problem. VOA’s Tina Trinh reports.
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From: MeNeedIt
The Trump administration’s 25 percent tariff on imported steel has been welcomed by U.S. producers of the material but slammed by American manufacturers that rely on a global steel supply chain to make everything from cars to razor blades. VOA’s Michael Bowman visited a can company that is being squeezed by the new tariff and has this report, which was produced by Elizabeth Cherneff.
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From: MeNeedIt