Latest news with #Clinton
News.com.au
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
Star, 27, stuns in ‘ultra-short' mini dress
BOUF products are priced between $29.95 and $39.95. Picture: Supplied Clinton had been testing the products for 5 months before BOUF was released for general sale in Priceline. Picture: Instagram/IndyClinton The working mums got to glam up for the event with a blowdry using the BOUF products before the event. Picture: Supplied Guests ate a Mexican-style feast and sipped on cocktails. Picture: Supplied 'The nicest part of my transformation is how I feel. Even my nose job didn't give me the same confidence boost that my hair regrowth has. After struggling for so many years, I just feel like myself," Clinton told Attendees were also gifted the products to take home. Picture: Instagram/EmDavies The 'proprietary blend of botanicals' in the BOUF products took a team of hair microbiologists in Japan 7 years to perfect. Picture Supplied Clearly, everyone had a whole lot of fun. Picture: Instagram/IndyClinton
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Iowa communities to receive $5.5 million for brownfield site cleanup
A former zinc smelter and lead alloying facility in Keokuk is one of several sites selected to received a commulative $5.5 million in EPA Brownfields Program grants. (Photo courtesy of EPA) Five Iowa communities have been selected to receive $5.5 million in grants from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to clean up and restore blighted or contaminated properties. Sites selected in Iowa are former grocery stores, a YMCA building, a meat packing plant, abandoned businesses and a smelting facility. The EPA Brownfields Program helps a community to assess, clean up and eventually reuse contaminated sites that would otherwise be unusable. The City of Clinton received a grant for a little over $1 million, which City Administrator Matt Brooke said will be used to remove the pool section of the city's former YMCA. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX The former YMCA building is contaminated with asbestos and lead, which make it unsuitable for redevelopment until it is remediated. 'This grant funding will enable Clinton to continue a crucial environmental cleanup project,' Brooke said in a press release sent by EPA. 'Clinton continues to work toward a cleaner and greener community for all people to live, work, and enjoy.' Iowa Western Community College receives EPA grant for job training The Iowa grants are part of a nationwide allotment of $267 million in brownfields grants. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the program will help to create new opportunities for businesses and housing while strengthening local economies. 'EPA's Brownfields program demonstrates how environmental stewardship and economic prosperity complement each other,' Zeldin said in a statement. 'Under President Trump's leadership, EPA is Powering the Great American Comeback, ensuring our nation has the cleanest air, land, and water while supporting sustainable growth and fiscal responsibility.' The EPA Brownfields Program started in 1995, but saw a significant boost in funding under former President Joe Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure Plan. Another recipient of the recently awarded funding, East Central Intergovernmental Association, has facilitated brownfield clean up projects in eastern Iowa through its participation in the Brownfield Revolving Loan Fund with EPA. The association was awarded $1.5 million to help replenish the fund, which EPA said has been 'high performing.' The fund thus far has supported projects like the YMCA remediation in Clinton and a property in Dubuque. 'Many communities are burdened with brownfield sites but lack the resources to address them,' said Dawn Danielson, ECIA's brownfields coordinator. 'The ripple effect of EPA's investments is transformational, not only for the site itself but also for surrounding properties.' Danielson said the remediated sites typically become 'catalysts for economic development' in the area and breathe 'new life' into communities. Le Mars Mayor Rob Bixenman, similarly said the grant will revitalize 'key areas' of the community and help to accelerate the city's community development plan. Le Mars was awarded $400,000 to assess and develop clean up plans at a former Walmart, meat packing plant, landscaping company and unused hotel along the city's business corridor. The City of Keokuk was also selected to receive just under $2 million to clean up a 16-acre site that formerly smelted and refined zinc and lead. According to EPA, the site is contaminated with coal tar, zinc smelting residuals that are high in polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAH, and heavy metals. The plant opened in 1915 and operated until the 1980s. The site has received a number of EPA grants as the city works to clean up the site and hopefully attract a redeveloper. The City of Red Oak was also selected and will receive a $500,000 grant to conduct site assessments and community engagement for unused properties along its Broadway Street. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
New York Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
24 Books Coming in June
The First Gentleman For their third thriller together, Clinton and Patterson dream up a political nightmare: The president's husband is on trial for murder as she is up for re-election. Two journalists dig into the first gentleman's past, which includes an N.F.L. stint. 'We're admittedly pretty tough on our fictional presidents,' Clinton has said of himself and his writing partner — putting it mildly. Flashlight One night, a man and his 10-year-old daughter take a walk on a beach; the next day, the girl is found nearly dead, and her father has disappeared. Choi's latest novel tells the sweeping story of this fractured family: Serk, the father, an ethnic Korean man born in Japan who emigrates to the United States in the 1960s; his former wife, Anne, an American dealing with the fallout of mistakes in her youth; and their daughter, Louisa, whose childhood is defined by crisis and pain. Atmosphere The best-selling author of 'Daisy Jones and the Six' and 'The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo' turns to the skies for her latest novel. Joan is selected as one of the first women to join NASA's astronaut corps and quickly proves to be a formidable, even-keeled member of her cohort. The book opens in 1984 with a mission gone awry, and leapfrogs from there between the crisis and Joan's pre-NASA life, training and eventual love story with a colleague. The Listeners Stiefvater, a popular young adult fantasy author, makes her adult debut with this supernatural twist on a real but seldom discussed part of American history. Set during World War II, 'The Listeners' follows June, the manager of the luxurious Avallon Hotel in West Virginia, who is forced by the government to comfortably house captured Axis diplomats. It's an ethically fraught assignment on its own, but the presence of these contemptible guests also threatens the magical springs that run underneath the hotel. The Catch Daley-Ward, a poet and memoirist, turns to fiction with this psychological thriller about twin sisters, Clara and Dempsey, who were separated as children after their mother's death. Thirty years later, they are reunited — each spiraling in her own way. But when Clara sees a woman who seems to be their mother, but who hasn't aged a day since she vanished, it upends everything the sisters thought they knew. The Dry Season Reeling from the end of a 'ravaging vortex' of a relationship, Febos — a self-described serial monogamist who gave up alcohol and drugs at 23 — decides to give up sex and dating at 35, if only for three months. 'To my great surprise,' she writes, those months become 'the happiest of my life,' and turn into a year. This ode to female celibacy interweaves personal memoir with literary and historical research, incorporating the influence of Sappho, Virginia Woolf, Octavia E. Butler and others. Mother Emanuel When a white supremacist murdered nine congregants during a Bible study at Mother Emanuel church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015, he struck at the heart of an institution central not only to Black life in the city but also to the history of the South. Sack's sweeping account, a decade in the making, situates the massacre within a larger story about the rise of the African Methodist Episcopal Church during the 19th century, its role as a champion of Black resistance and civil rights, and the often brutal efforts by white authorities to restrict its members' freedom. Buckley William F. Buckley Jr. — American conservatism's most eloquent pundit, the founder of National Review magazine, host of 'Firing Line,' columnist, novelist and champion debater — left an outsize imprint on the political right before it was overtaken by MAGA. Tanenhaus's immersive authorized biography recounts a singular life rich with incident (and a few scandals), from Buckley's affluent Catholic childhood to his apotheosis as a political kingmaker who grasped better than almost anyone else how to adapt politics to the media age. What Is Queer Food? In this ambitious work of social history, Birdsall unspools the story of how queer culture has informed what we eat. From the restaurant world to the AIDS crisis, the recipes of Alice B. Toklas and the preferences of Truman Capote, Birdsall presents a soup-to-nuts-to-brunch-to-all-night-diner portrait of the inextricable link between queerness and food that's as much cultural criticism as delicious celebration. The Gunfighters In this chronicle of the way real-life cowboys and their high-noon duels captured American attention in the late 1800s, Burrough takes readers on a wild tour of the West, complete with roaming buffalo, lawless lawmen and gunfights galore. His focus is Texas, a crucible of violent mythmaking and transformative change, where Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid and more loped their way into legend. Charlottesville Shocked by the violence unleashed by the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. — her hometown — in 2017, Baker returned to the city to try to understand the factors that led to that weekend and, eventually, to the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Encompassing activists, clergy, students and politicians, as well as neo-Nazis and white supremacists, her account draws on her knowledge of local and Southern history to create a deeply researched, and deeply felt, portrait of contemporary America. Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil Schwab, best known for books like 'The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue' and 'Vicious,' returns with a time-sweeping, character-juggling, lesbian vampire mystery. Jumping between 1532 Spain, 1827 London and 2019 Boston, the novel follows three women, all woefully constricted by societal conventions. Each is given the power to change her fate — transformations that come with new appetites and huge risks. Great Black Hope Less than a gram of cocaine in his pocket launches Smith, the protagonist of Franklin's debut novel, into an ordeal involving the criminal justice system, intense personal reflection and the many complexities of being a queer, Stanford-educated Black man facing both high expectations and low opinions from his own friends and family. So Far Gone The latest novel by the best-selling author of 'Beautiful Ruins' is a family caper set in rural northeastern Washington State, where a retired environmental journalist has lived for years in utter seclusion — no phone, no running water, only a single dirt road connecting him to the outside world. That is, until one spring day when his grandchildren, ages 9 and 13, arrive on his doorstep to tell him that their mother, his daughter, has gone missing. King of Ashes Cosby's latest thriller is a high-octane story of a family imploding. Roman Carruthers is a successful wealth manager in Atlanta who is suddenly called home to Virginia after a car crash leaves his father in a coma. Roman soon discovers that his father isn't the only one struggling: His brother is being hounded by gangsters to whom he owes a tremendous debt, his sister is worn down taking care of the family business, and, it turns out, the car crash that injured their father might not have been an accident after all. Murderland This work of speculative true crime by a Pulitzer Prize winner returns Fraser to the Pacific Northwest where she grew up, a region once known for both its toxic industry — including a mammoth copper smelter in Tacoma, Wa. — and its serial killers. Fraser provocatively connects the two, tracing suggestive links between the poisoned air, water and soil, and the violence perpetrated by men like Ted Bundy, Charles Manson and Gary Ridgway. The Sisters The three Mikkola girls have always been different; the daughters of an eccentric Tunisian mother and an absent Swedish father, they never quite seemed to fit with the people around them. As the sisters crisscross the world from Stockholm to Tunis to New York, their lives are recounted by their childhood friend Jonas, who is also Swedish Tunisian — and who closely resembles the author. Fox Oates's new novel — we've given up trying to count them — centers on Francis Fox, a predatory middle-school teacher who charms parents and colleagues but grooms and abuses his female students. When Francis disappears and human remains are found near his car, a detective must piece together the story of his sordid past. Bug Hollow It's the mid-1970s in the California suburbs when the teenage baseball star Ellis Samuelson goes missing, and then dies in a freak accident only weeks after he's returned. Huneven's sprawling family epic follows the ripple effects of this event across generations of the Samuelson clan — from Ellis's alcoholic mother and adulterous but well-meaning father to his younger sisters, his pregnant girlfriend and their daughter. Sounds Like Love In Poston's latest paranormal romance, Joni, a songwriter whose inspiration has run dry, returns to her North Carolina hometown hoping to get her musical groove back. As she navigates strained friendships and family drama, she starts hearing a faint melody in her head, along with a man's voice — which turns out to belong to Sasha, a musician who is just as flummoxed by their psychic connection as she is. Hoping it will cut off their access to each other's most intimate thoughts, the pair agree to work together to turn the melody into a song. The Möbius Book Start from the front cover of Lacey's latest and you're reading a novella about two women chatting about a third friend over drinks — while a puddle of blood pools nearby. Flip it over and you're reading a memoir in which Lacey takes stock of a relationship gone south. Is there a connection? Leave it to the gnarly author of 'Biography of X' to put you to work. Claire McCardell The designer Claire McCardell is often credited as the inventor of American sportswear — practical separates, flats, wrap dresses, pocketed skirts and zippers women could do up themselves. In the hands of Dickinson, this is more than just the biography of a fashion revolutionary: It is a story of the fight for women's identity and, incidentally, the birth of an American industry. The Compound In a house in the middle of a desert, 19 men and women — all young, single and attractive — flirt and compete for 'rewards' that range from the necessary (wood to build a front door, sunscreen, food) to the luxurious (makeup, clothing, diamond earrings). They are contestants on a reality show whose ominously enforced rules prohibit sharing any detail of their personal lives — and dictate that anyone who sleeps alone, e.g. without a member of the opposite sex, will be expelled. Rawle's eerie debut is an 'Animal Farm' for our age of relentless materialism. 'Make It Ours' When Virgil Abloh was named head of men's wear for Louis Vuitton in 2018, he became the first Black designer to serve as artistic director in the brand's history. In 'Make It Ours' — a biography both of the designer's short, impactful life and of the changing face of luxury — Givhan shows how Abloh's unusual path reflected not just a sea change for one house, but an industry figuring out its place in the modern world.
The Guardian
5 days ago
- The Guardian
Louisiana family rallies around boy who lost parents in separate crashes hours apart
A Louisiana family is grieving but seeking to rally behind a four-year-old boy whose mother was recently killed in a car crash – and whose father then died in a separate vehicle wreck while trying to get to her. Gabriel, the son of Alexus Lee and John 'JR' Collins, 'understands what happened', his paternal grandmother, Sandra Collins, told the Louisiana news station WAFB. 'And he's just having a little problem comprehending that we can't talk to [his parents]. We can't see them, but he understands that they are asleep and are with God.' Gabriel's struggle to comprehend has been shared widely beyond his state after news circulated that his mother lost control of her sports utility vehicle on 16 May, flipped and was killed after crashing into a culvert alongside a road in Zachary, which is just north of Louisiana's capital, Baton Rouge. Investigators called Collins to inform him of Lee's crash – and, while driving to the scene of the wreck, he hit a tree, was ejected and was killed in the town of Clinton, about 20 miles (32km) from Zachary, as WAFB reported. Neither was wearing a seatbelt. News of the engaged couple's deaths – hours apart and just months away from the wedding they planned to have in February 2026 – shocked those who knew them. Lee had recently graduated from Southern University in Baton Rouge and taught at a science, technology, engineering and mathematics school, and Collins worked as a truck driver. They had bought a new home. The couple's survivors then received an 'overwhelming outpouring of love, prayers and messages from friends, loved ones and even strangers, many [who] have asked how they can help', said a message posted on the website of a GoFundMe campaign established by Lee's sister, Dominque. The message – signed by Dominque Lee – said the aim of the campaign was to support the future of Gabriel, her orphaned nephew, and ensure 'that the legacy of his parents lives on through the opportunities we now can provide for him'. 'I'm heartbroken … that we recently lost … two incredible souls who were building a life together, full of love, dreams and devotion to their little boy,' said the message, which mentioned either establishing a trust fund for Gabriel or saving for his college education. 'While this loss is unimaginable, our commitment to Gabriel is unwavering.' On Facebook, Dominque Lee said she was preparing to have her third child before the deaths of Gabriel's parents – but now she was going to be a mother of four, she wrote. 'Rest [assured] knowing that y'all's son is in good hands,' Lee said in a post that paid tribute to her sister and the man who was going to be her brother-in-law. 'I always told you how I admire the mother you [are] – I'll fill those shoes with honor and compassion.'
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Work requirements are better at blocking benefits than helping low-income people find jobs
Meeting work requirements to receive government benefits can lead to burdensome paperwork. (JackF/iStock via Getty Images Plus) Republican lawmakers have been battling over a bill that includes massive tax and spending cuts. Much of their disagreement has been over provisions intended to reduce the cost of Medicaid. The popular health insurance program, which is funded by both the federal and state governments, covers about 78.5 million low-income and disabled people — more than 1 in 5 Americans. On May 22, 2025, the House of Representatives narrowly approved the tax, spending and immigration bill. The legislation, which passed without any support from Democrats, is designed to reduce federal Medicaid spending by requiring anyone enrolled in the program who appears to be able to get a job to either satisfy work requirements or lose their coverage. It's still unclear, however, whether Senate Republicans would support that provision. Although there are few precedents for such a mandate for Medicaid, other safety net programs have been enforcing similar rules for nearly three decades. I'm a political scientist who has extensively studied the work requirements of another safety net program: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. As I explain in my book, 'Living Off the Government? Race, Gender, and the Politics of Welfare,' work requirements place extra burdens on low-income families but do little to lift them out of poverty. TANF gives families with very low incomes some cash they can spend on housing, food, clothing or whatever they need most. The Clinton administration launched it as a replacement for a similar program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, in 1996. At the time, both political parties were eager to end a welfare system they believed was riddled with abuse. A big goal with TANF was ending the dependence of people getting cash benefits on the government by moving them from welfare to work. Many people were removed from the welfare rolls, but not because work requirements led to economic prosperity. Instead, they had trouble navigating the bureaucratic demands. TANF is administered by the states. They can set many rules of their own, but they must comply with an important federal requirement: Adult recipients have to work or engage in an authorized alternative activity for at least 30 hours per week. The number of weekly hours is only 20 if the recipient is caring for a child under the age of 6. The dozen activities or so that can count toward this quota range from participating in job training programs to engaging in community service. Some adults enrolled in TANF are exempt from work requirements, depending on their state's own policies. The most common exemptions are for people who are ill, have a disability or are over age 60. To qualify for TANF, families must have dependent children; in some states pregnant women also qualify. Income limits are set by the state and range from US$307 a month for a family of three in Alabama to $2,935 a month for a family of three in Minnesota. Adult TANF recipients face a federal five-year lifetime limit on benefits. States can adopt shorter time limits; Arizona's is 12 months. Complying with these work requirements generally means proving that you're working or making the case that you should be exempt from this mandate. This places what's known as an 'administrative burden' on the people who get cash assistance. It often requires lots of documentation and time. If you have an unpredictable work schedule, inconsistent access to child care or obligations to care for an older relative, this paperwork is hard to deal with. What counts as work, how many hours must be completed and who is exempt from these requirements often comes down to a caseworker's discretion. Social science research shows that this discretion is not equally applied and is often informed by stereotypes. The number of people getting cash assistance has fallen sharply since TANF replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children. In some states caseloads have dropped by more than 50% despite significant population growth. Some of this decline happened because recipients got jobs that paid them too much to qualify. The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan office that provides economic research to Congress, attributes, at least in part, an increase in employment among less-educated single mothers in the 1990s to work requirements. Not everyone who stopped getting cash benefits through TANF wound up employed, however. Other recipients who did not meet requirements fell into deep poverty. Regardless of why people leave the program, when fewer low-income Americans get TANF benefits, the government spends less money on cash assistance. Federal funding has remained flat at $16.5 billion since 1996. Taking inflation into account, the program receives half as much funding as when it was created. In addition, states have used the flexibility granted them to direct most of their TANF funds to priorities other than cash benefits, such as pre-K education. Many Americans who get help paying for groceries through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are also subject to work requirements. People the government calls 'able-bodied adults without dependents' can only receive SNAP benefits for three months within a three-year period if they are not employed. Lawmakers in Congress and in statehouses have debated whether to add work requirements for Medicaid before. More than a dozen states have applied for waivers that would let them give it a try. When Arkansas instituted Medicaid work requirements in 2018, during the first Trump administration, it was largely seen as a failure. Some 18,000 people lost their health care coverage, but employment rates did not increase. After a court order stopped the policy in 2019, most people regained their coverage. Georgia is currently the only state with Medicaid work requirements in effect, after implementing a waiver in July 2023. The program has experienced technical difficulties and has had trouble verifying work activities. Other states, including Idaho, Indiana and Kentucky, are already asking the federal government to let them enforce Medicaid work requirements. Complying with these work requirements generally means proving that you're working or making the case that you should be exempt from this mandate. This places what's known as an 'administrative burden' on the people who get cash assistance. It often requires lots of documentation and time. If you have an unpredictable work schedule, inconsistent access to child care or obligations to care for an older relative, this paperwork is hard to deal with. What counts as work, how many hours must be completed and who is exempt from these requirements often comes down to a caseworker's discretion. Social science research shows that this discretion is not equally applied and is often informed by stereotypes. The number of people getting cash assistance has fallen sharply since TANF replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children. In some states caseloads have dropped by more than 50% despite significant population growth. Some of this decline happened because recipients got jobs that paid them too much to qualify. The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan office that provides economic research to Congress, attributes, at least in part, an increase in employment among less-educated single mothers in the 1990s to work requirements. Not everyone who stopped getting cash benefits through TANF wound up employed, however. Other recipients who did not meet requirements fell into deep poverty. Regardless of why people leave the program, when fewer low-income Americans get TANF benefits, the government spends less money on cash assistance. Federal funding has remained flat at $16.5 billion since 1996. Taking inflation into account, the program receives half as much funding as when it was created. In addition, states have used the flexibility granted them to direct most of their TANF funds to priorities other than cash benefits, such as pre-K education. Many Americans who get help paying for groceries through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are also subject to work requirements. People the government calls 'able-bodied adults without dependents' can only receive SNAP benefits for three months within a three-year period if they are not employed. Lawmakers in Congress and in statehouses have debated whether to add work requirements for Medicaid before. More than a dozen states have applied for waivers that would let them give it a try. When Arkansas instituted Medicaid work requirements in 2018, during the first Trump administration, it was largely seen as a failure. Some 18,000 people lost their health care coverage, but employment rates did not increase. After a court order stopped the policy in 2019, most people regained their coverage. Georgia is currently the only state with Medicaid work requirements in effect, after implementing a waiver in July 2023. The program has experienced technical difficulties and has had trouble verifying work activities. Other states, including Idaho, Indiana and Kentucky, are already asking the federal government to let them enforce Medicaid work requirements. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Anne Whitesell is an assistant professor of political science at Miami University. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
