With the backing of three-quarters
of the U.S. public but not a single Republican member of
Congress, the House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a
$1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package that would send
direct payments to around 280 million people, extend
emergency unemployment
programs, slash child poverty in half with a year-long
expansion
of the child tax credit, and boost funding for vaccine
distribution.
The legislation, dubbed the American
Rescue Plan, now heads to President Joe Biden s desk. The
president, who is expected
to sign the bill into law on Friday, said
over the weekend that eligible
Americans can expect to start receiving direct relief
How many of people's mental health diagnoses are really just them struggling to function in a capitalist system that is amoral, destructive, overwhelming, overbearing, unsatisfying, and bereft of meaning? It's surely one of the most under-examined questions .
In a speech Wednesday
that signaled a potential presidential run, former Brazilian
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva condemned Jair
Bolsonaro, the South American country s current far-right
president, for his catastrophic mishandling of the
coronavirus pandemic and ensuing economic
crisis. This country is disorganized and falling
apart because it has no government, Lula told
a crowd gathered at the metalworkers union in São Bernardo
do Campo, where the 75-year-old left-wing icon s political
career began as an organizer in the 1970s.
While
Covid-19 has claimed the lives of nearly 270,000 people in
Brazil the world s second-highest death toll over the past
Thursday, 11 March 2021, 3:32 pm
The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue has had its fits and
starts, but nothing encourages such chats than threats,
actual or perceived. In 2017, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro
Kono felt that it was time that a strategic dialogue between
Japan, the United States, Australia and India should be
revived. The Quad, as it was termed, was on the way to
becoming a more serious forum, having had its tentative
origins in the cooperative efforts of the four countries in
the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami. Formally launched in
2007, the initiative petered out.
The evolution of
such a forum typically begins at senior official level,
On the eve of the world
marking one year since the coronavirus outbreak was
officially declared
a pandemic, humanitarians and global justice campaigners are
calling out rich countries for hoarding vaccines including
with a new analysis revealing that excess doses secured by
the United States, United Kingdom, and European Union could
inoculate all adults in 20 nations facing the worst
humanitarian crises.
The U.S., U.K., and E.U. have
each pre-purchased enough approved Covid-19 doses to
vaccinate their populations more than twice over, according
to the International Rescue Committee. These excess
doses could vaccinate people aged 16 and over of all 20 of