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Motormouth: How will all those charging stations work?
Q: With the advent of EVs and the need for thousands of charging stations, who is going to pay for them and will there be a cost to use one? If so, how much? P.J., Carol Stream, Ill. A: Good question, but one that I cannot answer in just a few words. Some stations are free, some you pay per kilowatt. There is no standard fee that I know of. Some are installed by retail businesses at their own cost to attract more customers who may spend more time shopping. Some stations are connected to the power grid, some are solar powered, especially in public municipal lots. The U.S. Department of Energy h...
Tribune News Service
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News briefs
FDA approves at-home COVID-19 testAn at-home test for coronavirus won emergency use approval Monday from the federal Food and Drug Administration. The Quidel QuickVue test got the green light as the government seeks to make it easier for Americans to determine if they have been infected with the deadly virus. “The FDA continues to prioritize the availability of more at-home testing options in response to the pandemic,” said Dr. Jeff Shuren, an FDA official. The nasal swab test can be self-administered by anyone over 14 years old or performed by a parent on anyone over 8 years old. It’s designe...
Tribune News Service
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Illinois reports 1,143 new COVID-19 cases — lowest daily count since July
CHICAGO — Illinois officials on Monday reported 1,143 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19. That’s the lowest case count since 1,076 cases were reported July 28, although the new cases resulted from a relatively small batch of 42,234 tests. The number of Illinois residents who have been fully vaccinated — receiving both of the required two shots — reached 835,597, or 6.56% of the total population. Over the past seven days, an average of 77,876 vaccinations have been administered daily, with 50,897 doses given on Sunday. Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Chicago expects a shipment of Johnson & ...
Chicago Tribune
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United orders 25 more Boeing 737 Max jets
United Airlines has ordered 25 more Boeing 737 Max planes and accelerated the timeline for delivering previously ordered jets as it prepares for travelers to begin flying again. It’s a vote of confidence in air travel’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and the 737 Max, which was cleared to resume flying late last year after regulators grounded the aircraft worldwide in the wake of a pair of deadly crashes in March 2019. “With a number of our aircraft nearing the end of their lifecycle and the growth opportunities that we know will exist in the COVID-19 recovery period, this agreement will h...
Chicago Tribune
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FDA approves at-home COVID-19 test
An at-home test for coronavirus won emergency use approval Monday from the federal Food and Drug Administration. The Quidel QuickVue test got the green light as the government seeks to make it easier for Americans to determine if they have been infected with the deadly virus. “The FDA continues to prioritize the availability of more at-home testing options in response to the pandemic,” said Dr. Jeff Shuren, an FDA official. The nasal swab test can be self-administered by anyone over 14 years old or performed by a parent on anyone over 8 years old. It’s designed for use by patients whose health...
New York Daily News
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Commentary: The hard work of being poor
As Congress advances a COVID-19 relief package that calls for a $15 national minimum wage by 2025, I am aware that some people think that being poor is a personal choice, or something that reflects personal failings. It isn’t and it doesn’t. I’m a coal miner’s daughter — no one has to teach me about hard work. My four siblings and I grew up in a West Virginia coal camp. Hard-working people were the foundation of our lives, even as the air we breathed was polluted with coal dust. The mines offered good work for a while, but they took a terrible toll. Our communities and water were contaminated....
Tribune News Service
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Editorial: Raise the wage: The federal earnings floor is embarrassingly low; fix it already
President Joe Biden was right when he said on his TV town hall last week that the federal minimum wage, frozen at $7.25 an hour for more than a decade, must increase. But Biden fumbled some of his numbers, and his sloppiness helps prove that there’s nothing magical about his target of a $15 national floor in four years. The key is steady progress toward a living wage for all. Biden’s words: “For example, if it went — if we gradually increased it — when we indexed it at $7.20, if we kept it indexed by — to inflation, people would be making 20 bucks an hour right now.” Actually, taking $7.25 in ...
New York Daily News
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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott: Public Utility Commission hitting pause on non-payment disconnections
FORT WORTH, Texas — The Texas Public Utility Commission is hitting pause on disconnecting customers for not paying their bills following the winter storm that left some with electricity bills in the thousands, Gov. Greg Abbott said Sunday. "The Public Utilities Commission is issuing a moratorium on customer disconnections for non payment," Abbott said at a news conference in San Antonio. "They are also going to restrict electric providers from sending customers the skyrocketing invoices at this time." Abbott said the commission held an emergency meeting Sunday. Lawmakers, including North Texas...
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
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News briefs
One-third of US troops have declined COVID-19 vaccine, Pentagon saysAbout one-third of U.S. troops who have been offered a COVID-19 vaccine have declined the inoculation, initial Pentagon data show. The choice still allows personnel to deploy. Pentagon officials told a House panel Wednesday that vaccination is still voluntary for service members because the vaccines developed by Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc. so far are approved by the Food and Drug Administration on an emergency-use basis. That would change with full approval by the FDA as many other vaccinations are mandatory for troops. Early...
Tribune News Service
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Immunotherapy pioneer Carl June shares prize from Israeli foundation that also honors Fauci
PHILADELPHIA — In the 1980s, Israeli immunologist Zelig Eshhar took a giant step toward finding the Holy Grail of cancer treatment: a way to make the immune system attack when its own bodily tissue turns malignant. But it wasn't until almost two decades later that his American colleagues, Carl June and Steven A. Rosenberg, figured out how to make that attack so potent that it would eradicate advanced, recurrent blood cancers. On Monday, the three pioneers of "chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy" — CAR T cells — shared a $1 million prize awarded by the Dan David Foundation, headquartered a...
The Philadelphia Inquirer
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