Also on today’s menu:
Emergency Rental Assistance In Jeopardy
Fed Plan Aims At 1 Million More Jobless Americans
Return Of Boris Johnson?
The man police have charged in the murder of Stephen and Wendy Reid has been a suspect since the couple’s disappearance on April 20. Logan Clegg was arrested in Vermont, and court records show that police believe he was the homeless man who identified himself as “Arthur Kelly” when they encountered him in the woods while searching the Reids’ apartment and the vicinity near it.
The investigation into their murders ranged across several states and involved the review of surveillance footage, credit card transactions, and bus tickets, as well as ballistics testing. Authorities say Clegg had the gun used to kill the Reids when he was taken into custody.
While Clegg has denied any involvement in the murders, authorities say the evidence shows he was in the area at the time of the killings and that he fled the region shortly afterwards. A witness came forward on April 22, claiming to have seen the Reids walking in the East Concord woods on the day they were killed and, a few minutes later, she heard gunshots. She then saw a white male who fit Clegg’s description along the hiking trail. “The man passed by her without saying anything,” an affidavit says. “She stated that after she passed him, at one point she turned to look back at him and found that he was looking at her.”
Emergency Rental Assistance In Jeopardy
Governor Chris Sununu has turned to the state’s congressional delegation to intervene with the United States Department of the Treasury after learning that “without notice or explanation, additional Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) funds for New Hampshire have been rejected while 28 other states around the country have been given resources for their program to continue.”
The state was expecting a $67 million reallocation of ERA 2 funding, and Sununu said, “With skyrocketing inflation, cold weather, and the holiday season, this is the absolute worst time for the federal government to take this step.”
On October 18, Sununu had sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, asking for the release of $66,979,329 in reallocated ERA 2 funds, as well as $38,000,000 in reallocated ERA 1 funds to avoid hardship for citizens who need federal assistance. “It is clear that Treasury is experiencing its own customer service challenges,” he wrote. “We have received multiple notifications from the Department indicating that it will no longer provide assistance, support, or even answer the phone to support their own federal programs (ERA, SFRF, SSBCI, CPF, and HAF just to name a few). Yet meanwhile we still need to continue to provide whatever assistance we can here on the state level for recipients of funding under these and other programs.”
Fed Plan Aims At 1 Million More Jobless Americans
Members of the Federal Reserve panel responsible for interest rate hikes hope to see the jobless rate rise to 4.4 percent by the end of 2023, nearly one percentage point higher than the September jobless rate of 3.5 percent. While a 4.4 percent unemployment rate is low compared to previous decades, Sylvan Lane reports, it would mean more than 1 million Americans would lose their jobs over the next 15 months.
Referring to the Fed’s interest rate hikes, Senator Bernie Sanders said, “I think it is wrong to be saying the way we deal with inflation is by lowering wages and increasing unemployment. That is not what we should be doing.” Senator Elizabeth Warren tweeted, “Chair [Jerome] Powell has said that the Fed’s rapid interest rate hikes will bring ‘pain’ for working families and even admitted it won’t lower food or gas prices. Throwing Americans out of work with a recession is not the solution to fight inflation.”
Fifty-five percent of economists believe the Fed raising interest rates too high is the greatest risk to the U.S. economy in 2023, according to a poll conducted by the National Association for Business Economics (NABE), a research group. And 75 percent of the group said the Fed only has a coin flip’s chance at best of beating inflation without causing a recession.
Return Of Boris Johnson?
Boris Johnson and his former finance minister, Rishi Sunak, were leading potential contenders to replace British Prime Minister Liz Truss, Reuters reports. Johnson was ousted by lawmakers in July, but remains popular with party members who are now looking to see who can replace Truss, who resigned this week. Johnson, however, had alienated dozens of Conservative lawmakers.
Sunak, the former Goldman Sachs analyst who became finance minister just as the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in Europe, and was runner-up to Truss in the summer’s leadership contest, is the favorite with bookmakers, followed by Johnson and Penny Mordaunt, a former defence minister who came third last time.
The Conservative Party controls parliament and need not call a nationwide election for another two years, but opposition parties, along with some newspapers and a few lawmakers, have said voters should now be given a say. “The Tories [Conservatives] cannot respond to their latest shambles by yet again simply clicking their fingers and shuffling the people at the top without the consent of the British people,” Labour Party leader Keir Starmer said.
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