$1 Billion Loans for Rural Businesses and Farmers
05/27/2020
47.5%
The Department of Labor reported an additional 2.4 million initial unemployment claims were filed last week — the jobless rate is highest since the Great Depression. The survey done by US Census Bureau shows that nearly 47.5% of adults live in U.S. households that have lost income during the pandemic and 37% expect to see income loss in households over the next four weeks. The survey finds that in Hawaii, nearly 6 in 10 (59.2%) adults live in households that had a loss in employment income since lockdown started. That figure is almost 57% in New Jersey and almost 56% in Louisiana and Nevada.
8
NASA announced it is seeking U.S. citizens to live in social isolation for 8-month locked in a Russian lab in order to help NASA researches by collecting data for future missions to Mars and the moon. NASA said it is looking for highly motivated, healthy people who are between 30–55 years old, must be proficient in both English, Russian, and candidates should ideally hold an M.S., PhD., M.D., or have military officer training. Participants with bachelor’s degrees and relevant experience will also acceptable, it said. The selected candidates will experience ‘environmental aspects’ similar to those astronauts are expected to experience on future missions to Mars, said the international space agency.
17.8%
U.S. existing home sales dropped 17.8% in April amid the coronavirus pandemic, reaching a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.33 million units last month — the biggest decline since July 2010, reported by the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist said that the economic lockdowns occurring from mid-March through April in U.S. states — have temporarily disrupted home sales. However, the fall was still lower than analysts expected. On an annual basis, existing home sales dropped 17.2% compared to the seasonally adjusted figure of 5.23 million in April last year.
$1B
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced up to $1 billion in guaranteed loans to help rural businesses and farmers amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The secretary Sonny Perdue said it will allow USDA to provide 90 percent guarantees on B&I CARES Act Program loans — used to cover working capital lost due to the pandemic’s impact. The loans can only be used to rural businesses, including agricultural producers that were in operation on Feb. 15, 2020. Eligible applicants can apply between Friday and June 22 and the program funding is set to expire on Sept. 30, 2021, said by Sonny Perdue.
300,000
Nearly 300,000 folks lost their jobs last week in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut as coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage economy. According to the Labor Department, In New Jersey, 70,000 jobless claims filed last week, 30,000 in Connecticut and nearly 200,000 New York people filed claims in the week that ended May 9. The unemployment claims have hit nearly 3 million Americans nationwide, bringing the two months jobless claims to 36.5 million — the number shows that the US is facing the sharpest slowdown and the great recession’s impact on the U.S. labor market.
1,000
The University of California announced that it will suspend SAT/ACT exams as part of admission requirements through 2024 and eliminate them for California students by 2025. More than 1,000 colleges and universities have said that the SAT and ACT would be optional for admissions cycles in fall 2020, 2021, and 2022, according to FairTest, a group that has pushed to end testing requirements. However, the test will be optional through 2024, when the system’s 10 schools could develop its own admissions test. The system had already suspended the test requirement for fall 2021 due to the coronavirus outbreak.
90
90-year-old Hamako Mori, also known as “Gaming Grandma” has over 250,000 YouTube subscribers, started gaming 39 years ago, when she watched some children playing the popular games of the time. Her YouTube channel launched in 2015, and she posts up to four videos a month. I feel playing games for this long was the right choice and I was truly enjoying my life, Mori said. She was recently awarded a Guinness World Record as the World’s Oldest Gaming YouTuber.