Tag: hundreds

Infrastructure Spending Into Trillions Of Dollars Could Mean Hundreds Of Billions In Fraud
IN OTHER NEWS

Infrastructure Spending Into Trillions Of Dollars Could Mean Hundreds Of Billions In Fraud

Jetson Leder-Luis, Boston University The U.S. government may be on the verge of spending as much as US$4.5 trillion in what could be one of the biggest investments in infrastructure and the social safety net in decades. The House plans to vote on a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill on Sept. 30, 2021 – which was already approved by the Senate – and may soon follow that with up to $3.5 trillion in other investments. The measures’ passage – and the total to be spent – are still up in the air. But if either or both bills do become law, they would not only reflect massive new government spending that lawmakers see as investment, but also a serious target for fraud. Most government spending does reach the intended targets – like mass transit, clean energy and broadband internet – but...
Coronavirus is hundreds of times more deadly for people over 60 than people under 40
COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS

Coronavirus is hundreds of times more deadly for people over 60 than people under 40

How deadly is SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19? And what are the risks of death for people of different ages and demographics? These have been hard numbers to calculate during this pandemic. To calculate the true death rate – more accurately called the infection–fatality ratio (IFR) – you would simply divide the total number of coronavirus deaths by the total number of infections. The problem is that with so many asymptomatic cases and limited testing for much of the pandemic, finding the true number of infections has been very difficult. The easiest way to calculate more accurate infection and death rates is to perform random testing. I am a professor of health policy and management. In April, in partnership with the Indiana State Department of Health, I led a team of researc...
Coronavirus bailouts will cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars – unlike past corporate rescues that actually made money for the US Treasury
COVID-19, Journalism

Coronavirus bailouts will cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars – unlike past corporate rescues that actually made money for the US Treasury

The U.S. government has now pledged almost US$3 trillion to save the economy and Americans from the coronavirus recession. Most of that is aimed at individual Americans in the form of additional unemployment insurance or the so-called economic impact checks. About $1.2 trillion – and counting – represent bailouts for American companies, large and small. And more than 60% of that is in the form of grants or other financial assistance that will likely become grants – funds that will not be recovered by taxpayers. The Congressional Budget Office estimated on April 23 that the company-related coronavirus bailouts, excluding the fourth one just signed into law, will ultimately cost more than $400 billion over 10 years. Given that most of the latest bailout, worth $484 billion, will most likel...
What Hundreds Of Prison Gang Members Had To Say About Life Behind Bars
IN OTHER NEWS, Journalism

What Hundreds Of Prison Gang Members Had To Say About Life Behind Bars

The United States incarcerates a larger proportion of its citizens than any other developed country in the world, with around 1.5 million people serving time in prison. But to anyone who doesn’t work or live in a facility, life behind bars largely remains a mystery. The public gets a glimpse of life on the inside only when there are riots, executions or scandals. As criminologists, we spent nine months interviewing over 800 prisoners in Texas in 2016. They told us about their lives before and during prison, as well as their impending return to the community, a journey shared by over 600,000 people each year. We also learned about a significant reality in prisons: gangs. Our new book pulls back the curtain on how gangs compete for control and structure prison life. Gangs wield power behi...
Hundreds of county jails detained immigrants for ICE
Journalism

Hundreds of county jails detained immigrants for ICE

Hundreds of county jails in the U.S. are paid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain immigrants facing removal proceedings. Theo Lacy Facility in Orange, California. Emily Ryo, CC BY-SA On a typical day in 2017, for instance, Theo Lacy Facility in Orange, California, operated by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, held about 500 individuals for ICE and received US$118 per person per day, bringing in a total of $59,000 a day. More so than federally operated facilities, county jails, along with facilities operated by for-profit companies, have come to hold for ICE the lion’s share of immigrant detainees facing removal proceedings. Removal proceedings are civil actions that federal immigration authorities bring against individuals alleged to have violated U.S. immigrati...
IN OTHER NEWS, LAW ENFORCEMENT

Hundreds arrested for ‘dark web’ child porn by international task force

Yesterday, authorities in the United Kingdom and the United States announced that 337 suspected users in 38 countries were arrested following an investigation of a dark web child pornography site. The website was based in South Korea and accepted cryptocurrency as payment. Law enforcement agencies from Germany, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States were part of the international task force. The current phase of investigation and arrests began in 2018. The website after it was shuttered by authorities Image: NCA. via Twitter At the center of the case was a website known as "Welcome To Video" and its alleged operator Jong Woo Son from South Korea. According to authorities, the site hosted a quarter million video clips containing sexual abuse of children, including t...
Stephon Clark: Hundreds attend funeral after police killing
Journalism

Stephon Clark: Hundreds attend funeral after police killing

Grieving protesters call for justice after funeral of 22-year-old black father of two who was shot dead by police. Civil rights activists vowed to keep the pressure up on the US government to deal with police misconduct as they attended the funeral of Stephon Clark, 22, father of two, and the most recent victim of a string of fatal shootings of black men by police. "We're going to make [US President] Donald Trump and the whole world deal with the issue of police misconduct," the Reverend Al Sharpton, veteran civil rights leader, told a congregation of hundreds at the funeral in Sacramento, California on Thursday. Clark was shot dead on March 18 outside his grandmother's backyard in Sacramento by police responding to a report that someone was bre...