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Roughly $10 billion of a $46 billion pool of federal rental aid has made it to renters, landlords and utilities companies after another $2.8 billion was disbursed by state and local governments in September, the Treasury Department announced Monday. Treasury said that funds from the Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) program reached more than 510,000 households last month and more than 2 million since the initiative began this year. The department had distributed the entirety of the $46 billion to eligible state and local entities in May to help struggling renters avoid eviction upon the expiration of federal and state moratoria.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom will travel to Glasgow, Scotland, next month for the United Nations climate conference, his first major conference abroad since becoming governor in 2019. Newsom will attend the conference alongside his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, and several members of his administration, including Environmental Protection Secretary Jared Blumenfeld and Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot. More than a dozen Democrats in the Legislature also plan to attend, according to Newsom’s office. Newsom’s announcement that he will attend the conference comes on the heels of his administration releasing a draft rule that would ban new oil drilling within 3,200 feet...

[Catholic Caucus] Mass Celebrated in Saint Peter’sA miracle happened in Saint Peter’s on the day of Saint Michael the Archangel (September 29).Despite the fact, that Francis forbad Masses in the basilica and turned it into a museum, some courageous priests were able to dodge the radar and celebrate a solemn Roman Mass at Saint Michale’s altar.Pictures of the glorious Mass were published on MessaInLatino.it. One shows a Swiss Guard who privately participated at the Mass in full uniform although this attire is used only in presence or at the service of the Pope – who obviously wasn’t present at such...

Major League Baseball's woke idea in early April apparently was to punish Georgia for what it viewed as its unfair, recently passed voting law by yanking the All-Star Game from Atlanta. At the time, MLB Commissioner Robert Manfred Jr. said the move was "the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport," that pro baseball "fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions at the ballot box," and that "fair access to voting continues to have our game's unwavering support." Georgia's election reforms include requiring absentee ballots be verified with a photo ID and expanding early voting...

President Joe Biden again forgot to put his mask back on after a speech in New Jersey on Monday and even coughed into his hand before greeting Democrats with handshakes as the coronavirus pandemic continues. The president arrived at his event wearing a mask but after removing it to speak, he walked away from the podium without it.

On September 29, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) announced that it is investigating what it calls “egregious violations of principles of academic governance and persistent structural racism in the University of North Carolina System.” To do so, it has launched a special committee and will release its findings in early 2022. According to the AAUP’s press release, the investigation was prompted by the “widely publicized mishandling of the tenure case of New York Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones.” But there has already been a significant—one might even say exhaustive—investigation of that incident. Local and national media outlets of all...

Hertz, the car rental agency, said Monday that it had placed an order for 100,000 Teslas, a sign of growing momentum in the shift to electric vehicles. By the end of next year, when the Tesla order is completed, electric vehicles will make up more than 20% of Hertz’s global vehicle fleet, the company said. Hertz said it was teaming with NFL quarterback Tom Brady to promote its EV offerings in a marketing campaign. “Electric vehicles are now mainstream, and we’ve only just begun to see rising global demand and interest,” Mark Fields, Hertz’s interim chief executive, said in a...

Tesla Inc. TSLA 12.66% became the latest U.S. company to cross the $1 trillion milestone in market value as its stock price has more than doubled in the past year on surging sales and rising profit.Helping Tesla cross the mark Monday was news that Hertz Global Holdings Inc. HTZZ 10.09% had ordered 100,000 vehicles from the electric vehicle maker to stock its rental-car fleet, a major bulk purchase that could help the car company get more of its cars into the hands of mainstream consumers.In crossing the $1 trillion mark, Tesla joins Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. , Amazon.com Inc. and...

Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe doubled-down on 2018 election fraud claims on the campaign trail in recent days; telling crowds that Republicans “took the votes away” from Stacey Abrams. “She would be the governor of Georgia today had the governor of Georgia not disenfranchised 1.4 million Georgia voters before the election. That’s what happened to Stacey Abrams! They took the votes away!” screamed McAuliffe. Former President Barack Obama campaigned with McAuliffe in Virginia over the weekend as the Democrat remains in a virtual tie with Republican Glenn Youngkin; telling supporters Republicans are using “trumped-up culture wars” to win. “We don’t...

Hilaria Baldwin broke her silence Monday on hubby Alec’s fatal on-set shooting of a cinematographer, expressing “shock and heartbreak” over the “tragic accident.“My heart is with Halyna,” Hilaria wrote on Instagram, referring to slain filmmaker Halyna Hutchins. “Her husband. Her son. Their family and

A group of House Republicans is calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland to rescind a recent Justice Department memo aimed at combating a rise in threats against school board members and other local education officials. Nineteen Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, who last week attacked Garland over the policy during a hearing, signed a letter on Monday urging him to revoke the memo. "During your testimony, you sidestepped the obvious effect of your ill-conceived memorandum and the chilling effect that invoking the full weight of the federal law enforcement apparatus would have on parents’ protected First Amendment speech," the...

Millions of filthy, used medical gloves — some even obviously bloodstained — were imported into the US from Thailand amid a shortage of personal protective equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a disturbing report. A months-long investigation by CNN found that the soiled, second-hand nitrile gloves were shipped to desperate US distributors after import regulations were suspended at the start of the pandemic to address surging demand. “There was just no other answer. There was no way to meet the demand,” industry expert Douglas Stein said told CNN. “But that opened the floodgates for all the nefarious behavior.”

If someone in a Home Depot store offers you assistance and they don't work there, you live in Idaho. If you've worn shorts and a parka at the same time, you live in Idaho. If you've had a lengthy telephone conversation with someone who dialed the wrong number, you live in Idaho. If 'vacation' means going anywhere south of Salt Lake City for the weekend, you live in Idaho. If you measure distance in hours, you live in Idaho. If you know several people who have hit a deer more than once, you live in Idaho. If you have switched...

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration will lift long-running COVID-19 travel bans against residents of most European countries on Nov. 8 and implement a new vaccination-and-testing rule — while also making travel tougher for Americans who are unvaccinated. Under the new policies, most travelers to the US must get tested for the virus within three days if they took one of the World Health Organization’s approved vaccines. The new rules tighten restrictions on unvaccinated US citizens and permanent residents, who will have to get tested within one day of travel — versus three days currently. The slow repeal of the nearly...

Here’s a collection curated by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists of what’s arriving on TV, streaming services and music platforms this week. [snip] Colin Kaepernick and TV and moviemaker Ava DuVernay are the co-creators of Netflix’s “Colin in Black and White,” a six-episode, half-hour series inspired by the Black activist and former NFL quarterback’s teen years. Jaden Michael plays Kaepernick, adopted by white parents in a white community. Mary-Louise Parker and Nick Offerman co-star, with Kaepernick serving as the present-day narrator. In a statement, he said he hopes to inspire youth facing racism and other burdens to overcome them and...

Reading through Fauci’s experiments and the one I find most alarming is the use of an acid to destroy a region of monkeys’ brains to magnify terror. They then simulated images of spiders and tormented them with fear. Human DNA is 97% identical to apes. Why fund that research?

THIRTIETH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME LUKE 13:10-17 Friends, today’s Gospel gives us a wonderful story of Jesus performing a miracle, something he still does today. I want to draw your attention to an extraordinary book by Protestant scholar Craig Keener titled Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts. The most surprising section of the book contains his reports of some of the millions of miracles that come, even today, from all over the world. I’ll relay to you just one case from Keener’s book. Ed Wilkinson’s eight-year-old son was found to have two holes in his heart. Surgery was...

CHAPEL HILL, N,.C. (AP) — Students in a North Carolina school system will have the entire week of Thanksgiving off to support students and staff members’ mental health and wellness, the district has announced. The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools said the new days off, which also include an optional teacher work day and two new “wellness” days, are among several new initiatives the school board approved last week, The News & Observer of Raleigh reported. In a presentation Thursday night, Superintendent Nyah Hamlett cited feedback from employees, students and families as reasons for the initiatives, which also include two years...

Scientists at ESA’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service have been tracking the ash plume since the volcano first started erupting in late September. Initially, the plumes of sulfur dioxide from the volcano traveled east from the Canary Islands to northern Africa and southern Europe, eventually getting to parts of northern and western Europe. Thanks to a change in wind direction in early October, though, the plume is now flowing roughly 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) across the Atlantic and over the Caribbean.Since the directional shift, the Atlantic has also gone unseasonably quiet when it comes to hurricanes and tropical storms. There are...

A location manager for “Rust” says at least four people were responsible for checking the weapon that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins — including gun-firing star Alec Baldwin. “A massive mistake was made,” Stacey Mickey-Evans told Australia’s 92.5 Triple M Gold Coast. “There are massive protocols to stop these things from happening. There are multiple checks for it,” she said Sunday. She noted that the armorist, assistant director and the key grip are supposed to “check the gun … no matter what’s going on on set. “And then very lastly, the actor checks the gun,” she said of Baldwin, who was...