Grocery Store Sales Stay on the Rise in May
Despite an overall dip in U.S. retail sales, grocery store sales registered strong growth in May as elevated inflation lifted prices but led many consumers to rein in spending in discretionary categories. May U.S. retail and foodservice sales totaled...»
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PRESS RELEASE
HUD NEWS
HUD No. 22-113
HUD Public Affairs
202-708-0685
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION ANNOUNCES FIRST-EVER FUNDING OPPORTUNITY FOR COORDINATED APPROACHES TO ADDRESS UNSHELTERED HOMELESSNESS, INCLUDING RESOURCES FOR RURAL COMMUNITIES
HUD Package Includes $322 Million, Including $54.5 Million Set-Aside for Rural Communities, For Permanent Housing, Supportive Services, And Other Costs
Package Also Provides $43 Million To Fund Approximately 4,000 New Incremental Housing Choice Vouchers
WASHINGTON – The Biden Administration through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) today released a first-of-its-kind package of resources to address unsheltered homelessness and homeless encampments, including funds set aside specifically to address homelessness in rural communities.
The $365 million package includes grant funds along with additional vouchers that will enhance communities’ capacity to humanely and effectively address unsheltered homelessness by connecting vulnerable individuals and families to housing, health care, and supportive services. This Initiative for Unsheltered and Rural Homelessness being made available by HUD strongly promotes partnerships with health care organizations, public housing authorities and mainstream housing providers, and people with lived experience and expertise of homelessness.
“We have a responsibility to ensure that people sleeping in their vehicles, in tents, or on the streets, including in rural areas, have access to decent, stable housing and services, like health care and treatment, to live with dignity and safety,” said Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia L. Fudge. “Solving unsheltered homelessness means delivering help to the people who need it the most, but who have the hardest time reaching it. It means putting Housing First and health care and other supportive services right after. With this funding, communities will have the resources to scale up coordinated efforts to humanely and effectively move people from encampments into homes by linking homeless outreach with health care, treatment, and housing.”
“Access to a safe place to call home is essential to health and well-being,” said Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. “The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to working across the federal government to end homelessness by ensuring access to health care, support services, and permanent housing for all Americans. I am pleased to support Secretary Fudge in bringing housing and health care within greater reach for those who need it most, including in rural communities.”
“Getting unsheltered Veterans and homeless rural Vets into houses is a top priority in the Department of Veterans Affairs’ strategy to end Veteran homelessness,” said Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough. “These new resources from HUD add timely new capacity to this fight. No Veteran should ever be homeless in this country, which they swore an oath to defend.”
“President Biden is following through on his promise to unite our country by delivering funding for health care and services that support individuals who are unhoused,” said Dr. Rahul Gupta, Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). “As a physician I have seen firsthand how important it is to address the social and economic conditions of a person’s life in order for them to realize the health and well-being every American deserves. Today’s announcement is a key step in our work to do just that.”
Specifically, the package includes:
· $322 million in Continuum of Care Program grants through a Special Notice of Funding Opportunity to fund homeless outreach, permanent housing, supportive services, and other costs as part of a comprehensive community approach to solve unsheltered homelessness, including a set-aside of $54.5 million specifically for rural communities. These grants will fund projects for three-years, after which they will be eligible for renewal through the annual Continuum of Care program competition.
· $43 million to fund approximately 4,000 new incremental vouchers will be allocated via a separate notice to public housing authorities with a priority to those that are partners in comprehensive community approaches to solve homelessness. These vouchers can serve households experiencing or at-risk of homelessness; those fleeing or attempting to flee domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking; and veterans and families that include a veteran family member that meets one of the proceeding criteria. Congress has provided HUD with waiver authorities to facilitate lease-up for vulnerable households.
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Doing the after-math
He endorses, they pay: Donald Trump has figured out a way to collect campaign-donor money from politicians seeking his blessing.
"Donald J. Trump, a man known for torching norms, has developed a novel business model. From his perch at Mar-a-Lago or summer residence at one of his New Jersey golf courses, the former president doles out endorsements to longtime elected officials and wannabe Republican nominees, influencing primaries across the country. Meanwhile, those candidates, who come from all over to visit him, pour money from campaign donors into Trump’s properties, paying for food, lodging and conference space. So far, he has collected at least $1.4 million from the candidates he’s endorsed in 2022, according to a Forbes analysis of campaign disclosures.
It’s a small amount of money for Trump, who is worth an estimated $3 billion. But given that it costs the former president nothing to make an endorsement, he gets a nice return on his investment. About one-third of the 224 candidates the former president has endorsed in the 2022 midterms have reported making payments to his businesses via their political committees. About 70% of these customers reported paying a Trump business before picking up his support, while the rest became patrons afterwards.
Like a lot of businesses, Trump’s scheme relies on a set of loyal customers.
Just five candidates are responsible for 50% of the money Trump has collected from his endorsees. The biggest of the bunch: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who has spent $252,000 at Trump properties, 99% of which came between Trump’s election in 2016 and the end of his term.
> Rounding out the top five spenders is a trio of other first-time candidates.
-- John Gibbs, who served as assistant Housing and Urban Development secretary under Trump and is now running for Congress in Michigan, has spent $98,000.
-- Former Trump Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, now contending for governor in Arkansas, dropped $90,000.
-- And Kari Lake, a one-time news anchor at a Fox affiliate in Phoenix, has shelled out $70,000 amid her bid to become governor of Arizona.
> Geographic proximity doesn’t seem to matter much to those seeking Trump’s endorsement. Kelly Tashiba, who is trying to unseat Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, spent $33,000 at Mar-a-Lago, 3,900 miles from her home state.
> Of the 10 biggest spenders, only one has a Trump property in the area he hopes to represent. But even that candidate, senate contender Adam Laxalt of Nevada, didn’t spend the money at the property near his home—in this case the Trump hotel in Las Vegas—instead shelling out $41,000 at Trump properties in Florida and Washington, D.C.
> The Sunshine State is home to a number of Trump properties, as well as the man himself, but Trump’s 15 endorsees from Florida have spent only $29,000 at his businesses altogether.
It’s likely that Trump has collected more than the $1.4 million Forbes was able to identify. Some states do not require candidates to itemize their expenses, including South Dakota, whose governor has made multiple trips to Trump properties. . ."
-----Reference >> https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2022/06/23/trump-endorsed-candidates-have-funneled-at-least-14-million-into-his-businesses/
In an interview, a senior engineer in NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, Chris Baker, said the space agency is interested in this kind of technology as it makes plans to help manage growing traffic near the Moon, including its own Artemis missions and commercial spacecraft delivering NASA science payloads to the Moon's surface
"One of the things that makes this mission particularly attractive to us is the capabilities it is demonstrating, and the US small businesses and commercial capabilities that it's leveraging," Baker said. "It's demonstrating access to the Moon for a small spacecraft on a small rocket. It's really pushing the envelope as a commercially owned spacecraft operating at the Moon and helping to blaze a trail that others can follow."
Finding its way —
NASA and Rocket Lab are gearing up to fly a novel mission to lunar orbit that in many ways serves as the vanguard of what is to come as the space agency and US companies ramp up exploration and development of the Moon.
The space agency is financially supporting the privately built satellite, named CAPSTONE, with a $13.7 million grant. It is scheduled to launch on an Electron rocket as early as Saturday from New Zealand. Developed by a Colorado-based company named Advanced Space, with help from Terran Orbital, the spacecraft itself is modestly sized, just a 12U cubesat with a mass of around 25 kg. It could fit comfortably inside a mini-refrigerator.
The mission's scientific aims are also modest—primarily, the demonstration of a new system of autonomous navigation around and near the Moon. This Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System, or CAPS, is important because there is a lack of fixed tracking assets near the Moon, especially as the cislunar environment becomes more crowded during the coming decade. . .
Notably, this will be the first interplanetary mission launched by a small, liquid-fueled rocket, the Electron vehicle. The launch company, Rocket Lab, has built an interplanetary third stage called Lunar Photon that will separate from the rocket about 20 minutes after liftoff. Six days later, after raising CAPSTONE's orbit to 60,000 km, the Photon stage will make a final burn and boost CAPSTONE into deep space.
Then the spacecraft will spend nearly four months traveling to the Moon, following what's known as a ballistic lunar transfer that uses the Sun's gravity to follow an expansive trajectory. While this path will bring the spacecraft to a distance of more than three times that between the Earth and Moon, it will require the small vehicle to burn relatively little propellant to reach its destination.
Suburban Sprawl > TECHNOSIS EXTERNALITY CLUSTERFUCK
In James Howard Kunstler's view, public spaces should be inspired centers of civic life and the physical manifestation of the common good. Instead, he argues, what we have in America is a nation of places not worth caring about.> A lot of this comes from the fact that the industrial city in America was such a trauma that we developed this tremendous aversion for the whole idea of the city, city life, and everything connected with it.
The immersive ugliness of our everyday environments in America is entropy made visible. We can't overestimate the amount of despair that we are generating with places like this. And mostly, I want to persuade you that we have to do better if we're going to continue the project of civilization in America. By the way, this doesn't help. Nobody's having a better day down here because of that.
'BEDROOM COMMUNITIES". . .And so what you see fairly early, in the mid-19th century, is this idea that we now have to have an antidote to the industrial city, which is going to be life in the country for everybody. And that starts to be delivered in the form of the railroad suburb: the country villa along the railroad line, which allows people to enjoy the amenity of the city, but to return to the countryside every night. And believe me, there were no Wal-Marts or convenience stores out there then, so it really was a form of country living.
But what happens is, of course, it mutates over the next 80 years and it turns into something rather insidious. It becomes a cartoon of a country house, in a cartoon of the country. And that's the great non-articulated agony of suburbia and one of the reasons that it lends itself to ridicule. Because it hasn't delivered what it's been promising for half a century now.
22 Jun, 2022 08:20
A fire broke out at an oil refinery in southern Russia’s Rostov Region on Wednesday after it was hit by a Ukrainian drone.
The blaze occurred at the Novoshakhtinsky oil refinery, affecting an area of around 50 square meters, and was quickly put out, the emergency services said. There were no injuries or fatalities, they added.
The Novoshakhtinsk oil refinery has issued a statement, saying it had been the subject of “terrorist activities from the western side of the border of Rostov Region” where Ukraine is located.
“A strike by two unmanned aerial vehicles has been carried out against the technological installations” of the oil refinery, the company said.
The first drone attack took place at 8:40am local time, with the aircraft striking the technological equipment of an oil refining unit. It caused the release of hydrocarbon gas, with a subsequent explosion and fire.
The second strike followed around 40 minutes later. However, the drone missed the oil tanks that had been targeted. There was no explosion as it hit the ground, but some equipment was still damaged by debris from the UAV, according to the company.
Unconfirmed footage uploaded on social media captured a UAV approaching the oil facility and smashing into it at full speed. The impact led to a large explosion, with the blaze starting immediately.
The quality of footage is low, making it difficult to confirm the type of aircraft.
The refinery is located some 10km from the border with the People’s Republic of Lugansk.
Ukraine’s military has carried out numerous attacks within southern Russia, mainly in the Belgorod and Bryansk Regions, since Moscow launched its military operation in Ukraine in late February.
The strikes, targeting infrastructure including oil facilities and also residential areas, have resulted in destruction, injuries, and several civilian deaths."
