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Wednesday, December 29, 2021

John Madden's Steelers connections are many, and numerous Steelers fondly acknowledged his legacy - TribLIVE

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Pro Football Hall of Famer John Madden died on Tuesday at the age of 85. His indelible imprint on the NFL came in many ways.

As a Super Bowl winning coach with the Oakland Raiders. A legendary broadcaster. And the voice and name behind the iconic EA sports “Madden NFL” video game.

An outpouring of praise and condolences was seen throughout the football world on social media. Including from those connected to the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Perhaps most notable were the posts from Steelers legend Franco Harris. The Hall of Famer’s unforgettable Immaculate Reception in 1972 came against Madden’s Raiders at Three Rivers Stadium.

A play that Madden admitted that still gnawed at him, as recently as Fox’s Christmas Day special about him.

But that didn’t stop Harris from acknowledging the inexorable link between the Steelers of the ’70s and Madden’s Raiders as frequent AFC playoff combatants.

As ESPN Stats and Info pointed out, the Immaculate Reception was just one of many legendary plays involving Madden’s teams.

In an ironic twist, Madden could’ve become the defensive coordinator under Chuck Noll when he accepted the Steelers head coaching job in 1969.

Who knows what would’ve become of Madden if he had taken that job instead. The Steelers organization also acknowledged Madden’s legacy.

Two of the organization’s former players — Troy Polamalu and Antonio Brown — were on the cover of the Madden NFL video game. Pitt product Larry Fitzgerald appeared with Polamalu on the 2009 edition.

Madden’s voice will also be forever tied to Steelers history as he was on the call with Al Michaels for the Steelers’ wins in Super Bowl XL against the Seattle Seahawks and Super Bowl XLIII over the Arizona Cardinals.

That was Madden’s final NFL broadcast. He called the Super Bowl for each of the four major networks: ABC, NBC, Fox and CBS.

According to CBS Sports, Madden’s career winning percentage of .759 was the highest for any coach in NFL history with at least 100 wins.

Tim Benz is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Tim at tbenz@triblive.com or via Twitter. All tweets could be reposted. All emails are subject to publication unless specified otherwise.

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How many guns are in New Mexico? - KRQE News 13

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New Books Explore the Many Ways Covid Has Altered Our Lives - The New York Times

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WHAT JUST HAPPENED
Notes on a Long Year
By Charles Finch
288 pp. Knopf. $28.

Would you pay $28 — the cost of a book — to re-experience the Covid-19 pandemic, day by day? Heck no? Well, it turns out to be deeply therapeutic. Reading this beautiful, bittersweet memoir — which Finch, a mystery writer, structures like a diary — feels like group therapy, a decanting and reprocessing of the little memories, the traumas and the observations that often got swept away in the wash of big scientific and political arguments.

Things like: what we wanted to stock up on when we feared, in March 2020, that there’d be massive food shortages, and what that revealed to us about what we love and who we are. Finch recalls all the distinct varieties of fear we felt, and our wish not to admit — even to our friends — how afraid we were, or how wrong we had been. He reminds us that many people found elements of locked-down life pleasurable, even preferable, before it became necessary to tamp down those feelings in deference to the pandemic’s broader status as a tragedy.

And he takes profound, frank, luxurious baths in the emotions of distaste and despair, which dominated during the pandemic. His memoir incisively suggests they reveal the depth of our love, actually, for other aspects of our world that we didn’t want to lose.

THE FIRST SHOTS
The Epic Rivalries and Heroic Science Behind the Race to the Coronavirus Vaccine
By Brendan Borrell
320 pp. Mariner Books. $28.

In this tale of America’s pandemic response, heroic scientists and public servants whip out their lab coats to save the country. The title is misleading. Borrell doesn’t only offer an inside look at the warp-speed vaccine-development process and rollout but also the government’s struggles over mask policy and the release of statistics while its own quarterback, ex-President Donald Trump, was running interference on his team.

Borrell had great access inside the Trump administration, and there are juicy details here. But his effort to make the pandemic-response story read like a cross between a Marvel movie and a police procedural falls flat. Veteran bureaucrats are “dudes” who have “seen some [expletive].” They curse so much that you wonder if their quotes were selected for the presence of an obscenity rather than for their content; the story becomes confusing, cluttered with characters who might not have needed to be there if they hadn’t nicknamed the Moderna vaccine “Yasssss Bitchhhhh.” Long ago, “The First Shots” was optioned by HBO, and it’s not clear if readers were the intended audience or TV producers.

A SHOT TO SAVE THE WORLD
The Inside Story of the Life-or-Death Race for a Covid-19 Vaccine
By Gregory Zuckerman
384 pp. Portfolio. $30.

This account of the race to develop Covid-19 vaccines contains many of the same episodes as “The First Shots,” down to a particular molecular biochemist’s ski-lodge realization that SARS-CoV-2 was dangerous. But it’s more focused and, to its benefit, traces its story much further back in time. Zuckerman answers a question still circulating among both vaccine fans and skeptics: How could scientists develop the Covid-19 vaccines so quickly?

The answer is that they didn’t. The Covid-19 vaccines were built on the backs of decades-long efforts to create other vaccines, like one for the Zika virus and, in particular, several failures to develop a useful H.I.V. vaccine. Paradoxically, Zuckerman’s might be the vaccine-science book for a vaccine skeptic because of its detailed accounts of those failures. The scientists it portrays are not perfect, not Marvel heroes, but people who struggle — and who then learn from those struggles. Stéphane Bancel, the C.E.O. of Moderna, and Ugur Sahin, the C.E.O. of BioNTech, are depicted in especially fascinating relief, though Ozlem Tureci, Sahin’s female co-founder, is somewhat neglected.

VIRAL
The Search for the Origin of Covid-19
By Alina Chan and Matt Ridley
416 pp. Harper. $29.99.

Chan and Ridley write with urgency in defending why people ought to take the SARS-CoV-2 lab-leak hypothesis seriously. Even if a reader doesn’t agree with them, that urgency inspires gripping depictions of what viruses are, how infectious-disease laboratories work and wonderfully lucid descriptions of bats.

But after gathering a lot of puzzle pieces, Chan and Ridley are unwilling to assemble it into a picture — to take a final stand on whether they think Covid likely did emerge from a laboratory accident. They assert most strongly, rather, that the people who want to investigate a lab-leak theory are persecuted and mocked as conspiracy theorists. This strays into tedious cancel-culture territory and is, anyway, no longer true. And also: Does it matter? Chan and Ridley powerfully recount how dangerous pathogens can both leak from a lab and emerge in nature. Ultimately, though, it’s not clear why knowing how the pandemic came about would immunize us against all the other missteps that made it so devastating.

AFTER LOCKDOWN
A Metamorphosis
By Bruno Latour
Translated by Julie Rose
180 pp. Polity. $59.95.

Latour’s astonishing meditation orbits the question of whether there is any good that might come from the pandemic. In the process, he tips over all kinds of American sacred cows. Most striking might be how Latour demolishes the supposed opposition between feeling “free” — as in, free to not obey lockdowns or even care about Covid-19 — and feeling aware that one’s life is inextricably intertwined with the lives of others and that one must, say, get vaccinated out of a duty to them. Real freedom, Latour says, comes in acknowledging the truth. It is the feeling of relief and liberation one gets when one accepts a reality that may in a literal sense be burdensome. True freedom is in knowing, for example, that you aren’t just “free” to go to a packed bar during an outbreak when you also work at a nursing home.

And locked down, he suggests, we may have become more in touch with truths — like our interrelatedness — that we previously strove to ignore. He launches a plea to respect the instincts that emerged during the pandemic — he insists we not forget them.

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Tuesday, December 28, 2021

MAQB: How Many NFL Coach Jobs Will Come Open Before the Season Ends? - Sports Illustrated

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Monday, December 27, 2021

Many Common Medications Can Raise Your Blood Pressure - The New York Times

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Popular pain relievers and antidepressants, as well as alcohol and herbal supplements, are among the many substances that can contribute to hypertension.

High blood pressure remains a leading cause of death and disability in America today. Nearly half of adults have high blood pressure, and only a quarter of them have their blood pressure under control, putting them at increased risk of heart attack, stroke, dementia, kidney disease and other ills.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, high blood pressure caused or contributed to more than half a million deaths a year in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those numbers have most likely increased, as blood pressure readings have shot up during the pandemic.

You may have long thought your blood pressure was within normal limits. But in 2017, based on better long-term data, experts lowered the numbers that constitute a healthy blood pressure, resulting in a greater proportion of the population with this risky condition. The former upper limit of “normal” blood pressure, once believed to be 140 over 90 millimeters of mercury, was recognized as too high to prevent serious health problems over time. The current upper limit of normal is 130 over 80, and a blood pressure consistently above 120 over 80 is now considered problematic.

There are many reasons for the nation’s high rate of uncontrolled hypertension, the medical term for high blood pressure. Being overweight and, for many, excessive consumption of salt lead the list, followed by inconsistent use of medically prescribed remedies and a failure to adopt lifestyle measures that can reduce elevated blood pressure.

Now, a new study has highlighted another problem often unknown to patients and overlooked by doctors that can complicate treatment of hypertension and swell the ranks of those with uncontrolled high blood pressure: the large number of medications and supplements people take, some of which can raise blood pressure and undermine the benefits of otherwise effective treatment.

The study involved 27,599 adults, 35.4 percent of whom had uncontrolled hypertension, who were part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys. The periodic surveys, which are known as NHANES and track the health of a representative sample of Americans, found that many people took medications and other substances that could raise an otherwise normal blood pressure or limit the effectiveness of treatment prescribed to lower an elevated blood pressure.

Among adults in the survey, 17.5 percent whose hypertension was not adequately controlled were taking prescription drugs that can raise blood pressure, the researchers reported. And 18.5 percent of survey participants with hypertension that was effectively treated were also taking such drugs, suggesting that some of these people might not otherwise need blood pressure treatment.

The study was published online in November in JAMA Internal Medicine. Its senior author, Dr. Timothy S. Anderson, a primary care doctor at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, said he and his colleagues hoped to alert more doctors and patients to the ways medications or other substances might be contributing to increased blood pressure. Increased awareness would be especially helpful before patients were prescribed drugs to lower blood pressure or given more potent drugs to enhance the effectiveness of current treatment.

For some medical conditions unrelated to hypertension, switching to a different drug might bring a patient’s elevated blood pressure back down to normal. For example, the study authors suggested, women on an estrogen-containing oral contraceptive, which can raise blood pressure, might be switched to a progestin-only or nonhormonal contraceptive. Similarly, those taking a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, or NSAID, to control pain might use acetaminophen instead.

There’s a long list of prescribed medications, as well as over-the-counter drugs and recreational substances and supplements, that can interfere with effective treatment for hypertension. In addition to estrogen-containing drugs and NSAIDS, the list includes widely used medicines like antidepressants and oral steroids such as cortisone; substances like nicotine, alcohol and cocaine; herbal supplements like licorice or ginseng; and, of course, salt. Caffeine, too, can raise blood pressure over the short-term in some people.

When doctors fail to ask patients what else they may be taking, using or consuming that can affect blood pressure — or if patients neglect to mention all of the over-the-counter and herbal remedies and prescription drugs they take — patients may be prescribed an unnecessary or more potent blood pressure drug that may have bothersome side effects.

Dr. Anderson said that doctors were “taught to screen patients initially for other drugs being taken that can raise blood pressure, but patients are not necessarily rechecked for such drug use over time.” He said that it was important for doctors to take good medical histories, including what might have changed in patients’ lives since their blood pressures were last under control.

“Maybe there was a change in diet that caused a quick rise in blood pressure,” Dr. Anderson said. “For example, some patients are very salt-sensitive,” he said. “Along with age and weight, it’s the strongest predictor of high blood pressure over time.” Changing just one frequently consumed high-salt food, like pizza, cured meats or canned soup, may be enough to lower the risk of hypertension.

Complicating matters is that people’s reactions to various substances, like the commonly prescribed S.S.R.I. antidepressants, are “very idiosyncratic,” he explained. “A particular S.S.R.I. may have a high impact on blood pressure in some patients but not others.”

For patients with hypertension who need to take a drug that can raise blood pressure, Dr. Anderson advised using a home blood pressure monitor. A sudden rise in blood pressure after starting a new drug can help alert the prescribing doctor to the need to switch to an alternative remedy if one is available.

Even if you’ve had normal blood pressure for five or more decades, there’s a 90 percent chance that you’ll develop hypertension as you get older, which makes it all the more important to modify risks like dietary salt and excess weight while you’re still healthy. Even a modest weight loss of 10 pounds can both reduce the risk of developing hypertension and lower blood pressure in overweight people who already have this condition.

Another common predictor is a sedentary lifestyle. Adopting a habit of regular physical activity can help people maintain a normal blood pressure throughout life. Other effective measures to control hypertension include quitting smoking and limiting consumption of alcohol. “Even a modest reduction in smoking and drinking can have a positive impact on blood pressure,” Dr. Anderson said.

Before you start medication for hypertension, show your doctor a list of all the drugs — prescribed and otherwise — you take, and disclose any problematic substances, especially high amounts of dietary salt, you regularly use or ingest.

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Sunday, December 26, 2021

Homeowners insurance premiums are rising fast - The Washington Post

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Ken Hoagland was surprised to see his monthly mortgage payment increase recently.

“I noticed that our mortgage had gone up $100 on a $1,250 mortgage,” he said. “So, I looked into it. First, I called the mortgage company and they said, ‘It’s costing a lot more to insure your house. Talk to [the insurance company].’ So then I called USAA and said, ‘What’s going on?’”

Across the country, homeowners renewing their policies are discovering that rising material costs, supply chain disruptions and climate change are combining to drive premiums up by an average 4 percent to an average annual premium of $1,398, according to the Insurance Information Institute, a nonprofit organization known as Triple-I that provides information on the insurance industry. Triple-I uses data from Standard & Poor’s Global Market Intelligence for its analysis.

Since 2017, premium rates are up 11.4 percent on average, which means they are rising faster than inflation — and insurance experts expect that the rates will stay high.

“From everything I know about homeowners’ risk, I expected those numbers to be higher,” said Dale Porfilio, the chief insurance officer at Triple-I. “Honestly, I would say they still should go up further.”

The cost of insuring a home depends on several factors. Location often drives costs up, particularly if the house is in an area prone to natural disasters. Some areas have higher rates because it costs more to rebuild a house there. How resistant a house is to natural disaster — for example, if it was built to withstand an earthquake — can affect rates.

When Hoagland spoke to his insurance agent, he learned that the increases in his insurance premium were tied to the rising price of lumber, a severe shortage of skilled labor and inflation. All those factors caused the replacement cost of his house to rise. The insurance company calculated the cost to rebuild his 1871 Tuscan-style house in Berkley Springs, W.Va., which he bought for $265,000 less than two years ago, at $625,000.

“My first instinct was this was some kind of insurance company scam,” Hoagland said. “I called all of the top-rated insurance companies, five or six of them, and said, ‘I’m not sure I want to insure replacement value.’ Every single one of them said, ‘No, that’s the only insurance we provide.’”

Most homeowners want their home back in the condition it was before the event destroyed it, which is why replacement cost — the cost to rebuild the home as it was — often differs from the value of the home. Replacement cost also doesn’t take into account the value of the land. In some cases, the replacement cost of a house is less than the value of the house because the land value is high in that area.

“We offer what’s referred to as replacement cost coverage,” said Karen Collins, the assistant vice president for personal lines at the American Property and Casualty Insurance Association, the largest insurance trade association. “We want to rebuild, to replace what you had before. We try to estimate that on an inflation factor. But when you have such an abnormal rate of inflation, those automated processes may not always keep up.”

Rising costs for raw materials, particularly lumber, and supply chain disruptions are adding to the bottom line. When the pandemic hit, lumber producers feared a repeat of the Great Recession. They cut production and unloaded inventory. But demand soared, catching them by surprise. The price of lumber spiked to $1,500 per thousand feet of board in March, a 400 percent year-over-year increase. The Biden administration’s decision in November to double the tariff on Canadian lumber to 18 percent, up from 9 percent during the Trump administration, also affected prices. Canada has been the largest U.S. trade partner for lumber, providing about 30 percent of U.S. supply.

“Right now, lumber prices are about $900 per thousand board feet,” said Robert Dietz, the chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders. “Domestic lumber production has really not increased in the United States. The economics of lumber tariffs when we’re trying to fight inflation don’t make any sense.”

The supply chain bottleneck has also made refrigerators and stoves more expensive and scarce. A survey by the NAHB of its members in May found shortages of materials more widespread than at any time since NAHB began tracking the issue in the 1990s. Appliances were rated the items most in short supply, followed by lumber.

“It’s taking longer to build, and it’s costing more,” Dietz said. “Using the [Producer Price Index] inflation data, we build a basket of goods that are connected to residential construction, and right now, those prices are up about 19 percent year-over-year.”

Climate change also is contributing to higher rates. The year began with a devastating winter freeze in Texas, which led to the state’s largest non-hurricane weather loss event. Hurricane Ida, which hit in late summer, is expected to rank among the five costliest hurricanes in U.S. history. It is too soon to calculate the losses from the tornadoes that ripped through eight states in early December.

Porfilio said insured damage from tornados, hurricanes, severe storms, wildfires and other natural disasters has reached $82 billion this year, bringing the total from 2017 until now to more than $400 billion.

“Climate risk is continuing to put pressure on all things weather-related,” Porfilio said. “We are seeing more severe hurricanes, more severe wildfires and the science isn’t as clear on tornado events in terms of whether they’re changing in frequency or not. But what we definitely do know is that severity is going up.”

When a natural disaster affects a wide area, the demand for materials and labor puts pressure on prices.

“What usually happens when you have an event that is destroying or severely damaging hundreds of thousands in a metro area is the building material pricing in those markets tends to be elevated for about six, sometimes as much as nine months,” Dietz said. “You get an increased labor shortage in the market and neighboring markets because a lot of labor and construction know-how goes into the remodeling sector for repair efforts.”

Because of the rash of natural disasters, some insurance companies are offering extended replacement cost coverage at an additional cost.

“After a natural disaster, a widespread incident, [there is] a demand surge … where you have costs that spike because the demand spikes in the immediate aftermath,” Collins said. “So, the normal cost to reconstruct, to replace, suddenly changes. An extended replacement cost endorsement, which is optional, gives you an extra cushion for that demand surge specifically.”

Home insurance costs are rising faster in some states than others. According to data from Triple-I, Colorado experienced a 21 percent increase in average annual premiums for homeowners insurance from 2017 to 2020. Texas’s rates went up 18 percent during that time frame, and California’s increased 9.6 percent. D.C. saw a 3.2 percent increase; Maryland a 13.4 percent increase and Virginia 14.8 percent. West Virginia, where Hoagland has his house, went up 3.1 percent.

Although insurance companies are filing rate increases to keep up with rising costs, they are being held in check somewhat by state regulators. California is a case in point. Although the state has been ravaged by wildfires, homeowners insurance premiums haven’t kept pace with increasingly expensive claims.

“There are some constraints with how quickly insurers can adjust their rates,” Collins said. “You may have some [states] who haven’t experienced the same amount of rate increases simply because the carriers are still in that process of a negotiated filing that is getting drawn out for a lengthy period of time.”

Whether the increases are small or large, there are ways to save money on homeowners insurance premiums. Hoagland opted to increase his deductible from $1,000 to $2,000, which reduced his homeowners insurance by about $500 annually.

Although 2021 may turn out to be an exceptional year for natural disasters and rising inflation, it could be some time before homeowners insurance premiums moderate.

“I think [homeowners insurance premiums] need to go up at a faster pace than this in the future because of climate risk as well as inflationary pressures on repair costs,” Porfilio said. “The reality is we should all expect them to go up because costs do generally increase, and all of our insurance policies are reflecting cost. So it is a question of relative magnitude. I do believe, and we’ve got ample data that shows, that rates should be going up more than they have been. I think there is a bit of catching up to do.”

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FEMA Covid funeral assistance: many families don't apply for $9,000 benefit - NPR

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Wanda Olson poses for a photo in Villa Rica, Ga., on Dec. 17. When Olson's son-in-law died in March after contracting COVID-19, she and her daughter had to grapple with more than just their sudden grief. They had to come up with money for a cremation. Even without a funeral, the bill came to nearly $2,000, a hefty sum that Olson initially covered. Mike Stewart/AP

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BOSTON — When Wanda Olson's son-in-law died in March after contracting COVID-19, she and her daughter had to grapple with more than just their sudden grief. They had to come up with money for a cremation.

Even without a funeral, the bill came to nearly $2,000, a hefty sum that Olson initially covered. She and her daughter then learned of a federal program that reimburses families up to $9,000 for funeral costs for loved ones who died of COVID-19.

Olson's daughter submitted an application to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, received a deposit by June and was able to reimburse her mother the $1,974.

"Had this not been available, we would have been paying the money ourselves," said Olson, 80, of Villa Rica, Georgia. "There wasn't any red tape. This was a very easy, well-handled process."

As of Dec. 6, about 226,000 people had shared in the nearly $1.5 billion that FEMA has spent on funeral costs that occurred after Jan. 20, 2020, the date of the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the U.S. With the nation's coronavirus death toll topping 800,000, it's clear that many families who are eligible for reimbursement have yet to take advantage of the funeral benefit.

Olson's son-in-law was traveling a lot, working on air conditioning systems in theaters, restaurants and businesses, when he began feeling ill, she said. After a few days at home, he went to the hospital and was put on a ventilator. He died several weeks later.

"He could never overcome it," Olson said.

To be eligible for reimbursement, death certificates for those who died after May 16, 2020, must indicate that the death was attributed to COVID-19.

For deaths that occurred in the early months of the pandemic — from Jan. 20 to May 16, 2020 — death certificates must be accompanied with a signed statement from a medical examiner, coroner or the certifying official listed on the certificate indicating that COVID-19 was the cause or a contributing cause of death.

The percentage of individuals who have been reimbursed varies dramatically from state to state — from nearly 40% in North Carolina and Maryland to fewer than 15% in Idaho and Oregon, according to state-by-state data compiled by FEMA.

While the reimbursement must go directly to individuals, some funeral directors have taken on the task of informing grieving families of the benefit.

After the benefit was first announced, David Shipper, owner of the Sunset Funeral Home, Cremation Center & Cemetery in Evansville, Ind., took out ads to let people know that help was available if they qualified.

"Nine thousand dollars — that's a lot of money. We wanted to find a way to tell people about it," he said. "We stopped advertising some time ago, but when we have a new family with a death from COVID, we tell them about the program."

Workers at the home will sit down with families, gather the needed paperwork, contact FEMA on the phone and help walk them through the process if they ask, he said.

Many families may simply be unaware of the benefit, but others may opt against seeking the cash out of reluctance to revisit the pain of the death, Shipper said. He said the better time to seek the help is when planning the funeral.

"They're much more likely to take advantage right then than if they've already spent the money and don't want to open it up again," Shipper said.

The largest states account for some of the biggest shares of the FEMA reimbursement money.

The program has paid out more than 21,000 reimbursements in California and Texas, which have both reported more than 74,000 COVID-19 deaths. Residents applied for more than $141 million in each state.

The fewest number of reimbursements have occurred in Vermont, where 123 people were awarded a total of about $704,000.

Expenses covered under the FEMA program include funeral services, cremation and interment, as well as the costs for caskets or urns, burial plots or cremation niches, markers or headstones, transportation or transfer of remains, clergy or officiant services, and the use of funeral home equipment or staff.

The program has been funded using federal stimulus funds, and money remains available. No online applications are allowed.

After all required documents are received and verified, it typically takes fewer than 30 days to determine if an individual is eligible, according to FEMA. Once eligibility is confirmed, applicants who request direct deposit may receive the money in a matter of days. It may take longer for applicants who request a check.

The reimbursement is one way of helping ease the emotional and financial burden that the pandemic has wreaked on communities across the country according to Ellen Wynn McBrayer, president of Jones-Wynn Funeral Homes & Crematory in Villa Rica.

She recalled one woman who lost her mother, husband and one of her children to the disease in the span of six months. One of the workers at the funeral home also succumbed to the virus.

"To have to help a grieving family is hard on a normal day, but to see so many deaths," she said. "COVID has just broken a lot of hearts and taken a lot of lives."

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Here Are Some of the Many Tributes for Desmond Tutu, a Force for Harmony - The New York Times

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From prominent South African lawmakers to religious figures, many on social media honored Archbishop Tutu as a patriot of peaceful principles who dedicated his life to combating injustice everywhere.

Tributes from global and religious leaders, South Africans and prominent supporters from around the world flooded social media on Sunday after the death of Desmond M. Tutu.

An oratorical force whose leadership helped abolish apartheid in South Africa, Archbishop Tutu died at 90 in Cape Town. His stance of nonviolence in the anti-apartheid movement won him a Nobel Peace Prize in 1984. And he was a vocal advocate for peaceful reconciliation, guiding South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was charged with investigating the crimes of apartheid.

His death was announced on social media by the office of South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa. The cause was cancer, the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation said.

Mr. Ramaphosa called Archbishop Tutu “a patriot without equal; a leader of principle and pragmatism who gave meaning to the biblical insight that faith without works is dead.”

Archbishop Tutu used his position as chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission “to reckon with oppressive pasts but also to hold the new democratic government accountable,” the Nelson Mandela Foundation said in a statement. “His contributions to struggles against injustice, locally and globally, are matched only by the depth of his thinking about the making of liberatory futures for human societies. He was an extraordinary human being. A thinker. A leader. A shepherd.”

Thabo Makgoba, the archbishop of Cape Town, said in a statement that Archbishop Tutu’s “legacy is moral strength, moral courage and clarity.”

“He felt with the people,” Archbishop Makgoba said. “In public and alone, he cried because he felt people’s pain. And he laughed — no, not just laughed, he cackled with delight when he shared their joy.”

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Archbishop Tutu’s legacy, many said, was one of unity and service, built on a life of campaigning for dignity for people everywhere and helping bridge divides.

“Indeed the big baobab tree has fallen,” the African National Congress said in a statement. “South Africa and the mass democratic movement has lost a tower of moral conscience and an epitome of wisdom.”

The Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader who had struck up a friendship with Archbishop Tutu, recalled “the spiritual bond” the two shared.

“He was a true humanitarian and a committed advocate of human rights,” he wrote in a letter addressed to Archbishop Tutu’s daughter Mpho Tutu van Furth. He added, “I am convinced the best tribute we can pay him and keep his spirit alive is to do as he did and constantly look to see how we too can be of help to others.”

John Steenhuisen, the leader of the Democratic Alliance, South Africa’s opposition party, wrote on Twitter, “A true South African giant has left us, but his spirit will live on in the everyday kindness we South Africans show each other, and in our continued effort to build a united, successful, nonracial SA for all.”

But Archbishop Tutu’s friends and supporters also reminisced about a man who loved life and who was a devoted partner to his wife, Leah Tutu. One friend of Archbishop Tutu’s, Richard Branson, the British billionaire founder of the Virgin brand, wrote in a tribute about teaching the archbishop to swim.

Ted S. Warren/Associated Press

“He was a fast learner and was soon splashing by us with plenty of giggles,” Mr. Branson said, describing Archbishop Tutu as “one of the most positive, funny, life-affirming people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.”

“He was one of the best among us. He brought light to darkness and lightness to heaviness,” Thuli Madonsela, a former public protector for South Africa, wrote on Twitter.

Other leaders, officials and public figures outside South Africa also shared their condolences, or simply drew attention to the words of Archbishop Tutu himself. Accompanied by an image of the pair embracing, former President Barack Obama said the cleric was “grounded in the struggle for liberation and justice in his own country, but also concerned with injustice everywhere.”

“He never lost his impish sense of humor and willingness to find humanity in his adversaries,” Mr. Obama said.

Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store of Norway said on Twitter that Norway sent its “heartfelt condolences to his family and to the South African nation.”

“May his immense contribution to peace and human rights continue to inspire,” Mr. Store added.

Archbishop Tutu would be “remembered for his spiritual leadership and irrepressible good humour,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain wrote on Twitter.

He was also commemorated on Sunday by members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community, including the American former tennis player Billie Jean King, as an ally who urged gay and lesbian Christians to take up church leadership positions.

Palestinian leaders also mourned Archbishop Tutu, a forthright critic of Israel’s actions toward Palestinians.

“His support for Palestine was an embrace of love & empathy,” said Hanan Ashwari, a Palestinian former peace negotiator, praising his commitment to “our shared struggle for justice & freedom.”

Though the loss was painful, mourners said, his achievements were evidence of a meaningful life that would be remembered forever.

“A great, influential elder is now an eternal, witnessing ancestor,” Rev. Bernice King, the youngest child of the civil rights activist Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., tweeted. “And we are better because he was here.”

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As child tax credit payments expire, many Maine families face 'hard choices' - Press Herald

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Samantha Donley has come to rely on the $300-a-month tax credit payment the federal government has been sending her family this year.

The checks help pay for things like child care for her 14-month son and gas for when she travels to Portland from Wilton three days a week to attend the University of Southern Maine.

While she has been in school, her family has lived on her husband’s income and the leftover grant funding for her education. The expanded child tax credit is one of the reasons she decided to go back to school in the first place.

“It has definitely helped us,” Donley said. “We’ve started planning it into our budget. Without it, it’s going to make everything tighter in our household.”

Those payments may be history for Donley and thousands of other Maine residents. Congress expanded the tax credit and distributed it in monthly payments as part of this year’s American Rescue Plan Act. And under that law, the expanded credit expires this month and the last monthly check was sent to families on Dec. 15.

President Biden’s Build Back Better bill includes an extension that would keep the checks flowing. But Congress failed to pass that measure before the holidays, and its prospects are uncertain.

There are roughly 200,000 children under the age of 18 in Maine whose families have benefited from the expanded credit, which was promoted by the Biden administration as a way to keep families from poverty as the pandemic has upended so many lives.

The Center on Poverty & Social Policy at Columbia University reported that the child tax credit reached 61.1 million children, lifting about 3.6 million kids out of poverty. A U.S. Census Bureau report found that most families were using the payments for necessities like food, rent and utilities.

While Biden’s Build Back Better bill would extend the tax credit, the $2.2 trillion spending package was dealt a major blow when West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin announced last week that he could not support it. With all 50 Republicans opposed, Democrats can’t afford to lose even one vote in the evenly divided U.S. Senate.

In fact, the inclusion of the expanded child tax credit has been a key sticking point for Manchin. During private negotiations with the White House last week, Manchin said he would support a bill if the child tax credit was stripped, the Washington Post reported.

The White House has been firm in its belief that the child tax credit is paramount.

“Maybe Senator Manchin can explain to the millions of children who have been lifted out of poverty, in part due to the Child Tax Credit, why he wants to end a program that is helping achieve this milestone,” press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement Sunday.

Maine’s senators are divided on the Build Back Better bill, with independent Sen. Angus King pledging support and Republican Sen. Susan Collins opposed.

Collins has, however, said she’s open to overhauling the child tax credit program, something her Republican colleague, Mitt Romney, floated this week as a way to continue some form of monthly payouts. It’s not clear what kind of support that might have.

Donley said she’s not convinced many senators are thinking about people like her when they debate programs like the expanded child tax credit.

Roxy Kai-Petrovich, who lives in Woodstock with her husband and 8-year-old daughter, said her family, too, has benefitted greatly from the monthly tax credit payment.

Roxy Kai-Petrovich, center, worries about the impact on her family if expanded child tax credit payments come to an end. She is shown here with her husband, Alex, and 8-year-old daughter, Nova. Photo courtesy of Roxy Kai-Petrovich

Prior to this year, households received a tax credit of up to $2,000 when they filed their annual taxes, paid as a lump sum. Under the current plan that expires this month, families who make less than $150,000 have received $300 per month for each child age 5 or younger, and up to $250 for children ages 6 to17. Over the course of a year, that’s as much as $1,600 more per child.

“Seeing that amount reduced will be pretty impactful for us,” said Kai-Petrovich. “It’s the difference between buying food and paying another bill some months. I think a lot of families with children could be put into places where they have to make these hard choices.”

Lindsey Clancy of Kennebunk wrote in a newspaper column this month that the monthly child tax credit payments have been paying largely for child care costs for her two daughters, ages 3 and 8.

Both she and her husband work, but their child care costs totaled $18,000 last year. When the pandemic hit Maine in 2020 and forced their daughters’ day care to close for two months, they had to decide whether to keep paying or risk losing their spots. They chose to keep paying, even though it meant stretching their budget in other ways.

“Our child tax credit payments, which started in July, have fully paid for our oldest child’s after-school care. They have also given us the peace of mind to know that we have money to pay any emergency child care costs, such as if our daughters’ day cares temporarily shut down,” Clancy wrote.

The fate of Biden’s Build Back Better bill will have many other repercussions beyond the tax credit. Among other provisions, it includes funding for universal prekindergarten for 10 years, an expansion of the Obamacare health insurance system, and hundreds of billions of dollars to combat climate change.

Biden said this week he is still confident that he and Manchin can reach a compromise on the bill, although it’s not clear how any deal would affect the tax credit provision. The White House also has suggested that if Build Back Better fails to pass in time to resume payments in January, it might double monthly payments in February.

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Saturday, December 25, 2021

Many U.S. churches canceling in-person Christmas services as Covid-19 surges - NBC News

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NEW YORK — Amid the surge of coronavirus cases across the U.S., numerous churches have canceled in-person Christmas services, disappointing pastors and churchgoers who consider them an annual highlight.

Other churches planned outdoor services or proposed a hybrid of online and in-person worship, often imposing tight restrictions for those in attendance. These included requirements to wear masks and show proof of Covid-19 vaccinations.

Among the prominent churches canceling some or all of their in-person Christmas services were Washington National Cathedral in the nation’s capital; St. John the Divine, the cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of New York; and the historic Old South Church in Boston.

The Rev. Nancy Taylor, senior minister of Old South, said the church — affiliated with the United Church of Christ — still hoped to hold in-person Christmas Day services on Saturday, but was shifting its popular Christmas Eve service to online-only.

“The Christmas Eve congregation tends to be larger with a lot of visitors, some of whom have come from parties, and many of whom are not used to Boston’s mask mandate,” she explained in her announcement.

“While we cherish these guests under normal circumstances, these are not normal circumstances. We are prioritizing the health and safety of our volunteers and staff,” she said. “We know how disappointing this is.”

Leaders of Washington National Cathedral, which traditionally welcomes more than 15,000 people to its Christmas services, announced that all its services until Jan. 9 would be offered only remotely, with no worshippers or visitors allowed in the cathedral.

“Unfortunately, as the omicron variant takes hold across the world, our city seems to be leading the nation in infections,” said the cathedral’s dean, the Very Rev. Randolph Marshall Hollerith. “Given the spike in infections, I simply cannot justify gathering massive crowds as the public health situation worsens around us.”

Another major Washington church — National City Christian Church — also canceled its Christmas Eve service and will shift exclusively to online worship at least through Jan. 16.

Leaders of National City — the national church of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) — described their decision as one “we desperately did not want to make but feel we must.” They noted that Washington’s mayor, Murial Bowser, had declared a state of emergency in the District of Columbia.

In New York City, which is experiencing record numbers of positive tests for Covid-19, leaders at St. John Divine said they were shifting all Christmas services to online-only, using its Facebook page and YouTube channel.

“The time has come once again to put the needs and concerns of our wider community first,” the cathedral said on its website.

Another historic New York City church — Middle Collegiate -- was gutted by a fire in December 2020. After overseeing painstaking rebuilding efforts, the Rev. Jacqui Lewis — the senior minister — was eagerly anticipating an in-person Christmas Eve service, but it has now been canceled.

The decision “is one of the hardest choices I’ve had to make as a pastor,” Lewis told The Associated Press via email. “This was going to be the magnificent Christmas worship we’d longed for. But I love my people too much to risk their lives.”

“My fabulous team pivoted on a dime, and we’ll be hosting a gorgeous online celebration,” she added. “We’ll have stunning music and fiery preaching. But most importantly, we’ll be safe. And we’ll be together.”

Among other churches cancelling in-person Christmas services were the Abraham Lincoln Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Springfield, Illinois, and the First Church of God in Columbus, Ohio, home to a large, predominantly African American congregation.

Bishop Timothy Clarke, First Church of God’s senior pastor, announced his decision live on the church’s website Thursday evening.

“Blame me,” he told congregation members who might be disappointed. “I am the one who will stand before God and give an account.”

Just north of New York City, Westchester County’s Bedford Presbyterian Church was among many churches nationwide planning to proceed with in-person Christmas services despite the spread of the omicron variant.

The Rev. Carol Howard Merritt — the senior pastor — said the decision was made by a group that included parents, a school administrator and a physician.

“It became clear that though the variant is highly contagious, the infections seem to result in milder cases, especially for those who are vaccinated and boosted,” Merritt said via email. “In response, we decided to hold in-person services while making sure that we require masks, stagger seating, limit attendance, and shorten services.”

At All Saints’ Episcopal Church in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, the Rev. Steven Paulikas made a similar decision — going ahead with in-person services while requiring masks for all those who attend. The Christmas Eve service was featuring music by the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, led by a congregation member, Arturo O’Farrill.

“Arturo and I decided this week to go ahead with having the orchestra, who are all vaccinated and tested regularly,” Paulikas said. “As Arturo put it, we need to do what the congregation needs most — and what we need most right now is some beauty and hope.”

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Many African Countries Toughen Covid Restrictions as Fourth Wave Spreads - The New York Times

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Infections have more than doubled or tripled in many countries, prompting the authorities to reimpose curfews and quarantines and introduce vaccine mandates as the holiday season gets underway.

NAIROBI, Kenya — In just the past three weeks, the percentage of Kenyans who tested positive for the coronavirus jumped from less than 1 percent to more than 30 percent — the country’s highest positivity rate yet.

In Uganda, nearly 50 lawmakers and their staff members, some of them vaccinated, tested positive this week after attending a sports tournament in neighboring Tanzania.

And in Zimbabwe, skyrocketing infections have pushed the government to institute new restrictions on businesses and incoming travelers.

Across Africa, countries are reporting a surge in Covid cases, and health officials worry about how the new Omicron variant will affect the world’s least-vaccinated continent. Omicron, which was first detected in southern Africa, remains highly contagious, but so far it is causing fewer deaths and hospitalizations than previous variants such as Delta.

The latest wave comes as many African countries were beginning to reopen and businesses were hoping for a robust holiday season — only for governments to reintroduce curfews and quarantines and impose new vaccine mandates.

Even as Britain and the United States lifted Omicron-related travel restrictions on southern African states in the past week, Africans faced new travel restrictions from elsewhere because of the rising infections. Beginning Saturday, the United Arab Emirates is suspending entry for travelers from Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania, and impose additional requirements for those traveling from Ghana and Uganda.

Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/Associated Press

“We are unfortunately going to be celebrating the end-of-the-year holiday season in the middle of the fourth wave that’s sweeping across the continent,” Dr. John N. Nkengasong, the head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a news conference on Thursday.

At least 21 African countries are now experiencing a fourth wave of the pandemic, according to the Africa C.D.C. Three countries — Algeria, Kenya and Mauritius — are undergoing a fifth one.

Cases have more than doubled in recent weeks in nations including Botswana, Nigeria, Rwanda and Zimbabwe. Positivity rates have soared, too: Malawi reported a 46.29 percent positivity rate on Thursday compared with just a 1.54 percent rate on Nov. 30. Infections are surging among young people in Uganda, with some epidemiologists attributing that to younger age groups being the most active during the holiday season.

Omicron is tearing through Africa, with 22 nations now reporting the variant. It is not known whether the highly contagious variant is the dominant one or the one driving the surge of infections across Africa. But health experts say that even in countries where genomic sequencing is not readily available, the sudden bump in cases could point to the spread of the Omicron variant.

And experts say overall Covid infections in Africa are likely higher given the lack of widespread testing in many countries.

Early data from South Africa this past week suggested that the country’s Omicron wave might have peaked, with officials ending tracing efforts and scrapping isolation for people who were possibly exposed but not experiencing symptoms. Another study showed that people diagnosed with Omicron in South Africa were less likely to be hospitalized than those with previous variants like Delta.

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But Dr. Nkengasong warned that the data from South Africa might not hold for other countries, because the population there is relatively young and the vaccination rate is high compared with that of many other African countries.

“Let’s be careful not to extrapolate what we are seeing in South Africa across the continent or across the world,” he said.

In hospitals in many African cities, doctors are reporting more infections.

Tinashe Gede, an immunologist who works at the public Parirenyatwa General Hospital in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, said he had seen an increase in admissions, but without the need for ventilators and life-support machines. A significant number of new cases he has treated have been breakthrough infections, he said, but symptoms have not been severe.

Health workers are getting sick, too.

At least 436 health workers tested positive last week at Dr. Gede’s hospital, according to Linos Dhire, the hospital’s spokesman.

Dr. Nelly Bosire, an obstetrician and gynecologist in Nairobi, said she had to call 10 pediatricians to find one to attend to a newborn on a recent night. Eight of them, she said, were either coughing, in isolation or had a confirmed Covid diagnosis. The virus, she said, was spreading like “wildfire.”

Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization’s regional director for Africa, said she was still “cautiously optimistic” that severe illness and deaths will remain low in the fourth wave.

But slow vaccine rollouts might hamper those prospects, she added, given that only six African countries have hit the target set by the W.H.O. of fully vaccinating 40 percent of their population.

Even as vaccine supplies arrive, many African countries continue to face challenges getting them into people’s arms. It is difficult to deliver the vaccines to rural areas and to find enough temperature-controlled storage. Vaccine skepticism plays a role, too; Dr. Nkengasong said that about 20 percent of Africans remained hesitant to get vaccinated.

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Some donated vaccines do not have a long shelf life, prompting the authorities in nations like Nigeria to destroy them.

In Kenya, vaccine rollouts are hampered because health officials have not launched nationwide campaigns to convince their population of the benefits of Covid vaccines, said Anand Madhvani, the Covid Kenya network coordinator.

For now, governments are racing to institute a motley of rules to curb the fresh wave of infections. Rwanda reimposed a night curfew and suspended concerts. Several nations, including Botswana, Ghana and Malawi, have introduced vaccine mandates targeting local populations or incoming travelers.

On Wednesday, Kenya’s health ministry said it would bar unvaccinated people from public spaces, even though a court recently halted the vaccine mandate. By Friday, some malls in the capital, Nairobi, had started asking shoppers and employees to show proof of vaccination.

The spike in cases and the ensuing restrictions are upending holiday plans for those like Denis Munjanja, a businessman in Harare who got sick with Covid last year. Mr. Munjanja said he was afraid of contracting the virus again, and he and his family have decided to stay indoors during the holiday season instead of mixing with loved ones.

Almost two years into a pandemic, he said, this wasn’t the festive mood he had hoped for. But he said, “We just have to be extra cautious.”

Abdi Latif Dahir reported from Nairobi, and Jeffrey Moyo from Harare, Zimbabwe. Lynsey Chutel contributed reporting from Johannesburg.

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