From USA TODAY Network and wire reports
Alabama
Birmingham: A year into the coronavirus pandemic, the creator of a popular website for tracking COVID-19 in the state is pondering what will become of his creation once the health care crisis eases. David Marconnet told WBHM he sees two options for his Bama Tracker site, which has been visited by at least 1.5 million people so far and presents publicly available data about the virus in easily accessible, understandable charts and graphs. Bama Tracker could remain online as an archive for researchers or anyone who wants to look through pandemic data, said Marconnet, or it could adapt to track other data that Alabamians find interesting. “I’ve been playing with some ideas there, and I’ve had some struggles figuring out what people would care about,” Marconnet said. “I don’t have an answer there. We’ll just sort of see.” The software developer from Huntsville didn’t have any idea what his side project would become when
NorthJersey.com
A weekly Jewish newspaper based in Teaneck has sparked controversy over the publication of a satirical story that joked about shooting Palestinians, in a play on words referring to the COVID-19 vaccine.
The Jewish Link’s four-paragraph article, which ran in the Feb. 25 Purim satire edition, stated that 100,000 Palestinians were shot by Israeli sharpshooters dispensing the vaccine. After all the Arabs are shot once, we look forward to shooting them a second time, it added.
Several readers, including two rabbis, wrote to the Jewish Link saying the article was in bad taste. On Monday, the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations called for a public apology.