It has been an overwhelming summer, considering New York was the country’s epicenter for COVID-19 cases earlier this season. The state has been the sight of many protests in support of the BLM movement. “Law and Order. If @NYCMayor can’t do it, we will!” tweeted President Trump on August 16th in regards to, what many local newspapers are calling, the deadliest summer since 1996. This number has more than doubled from the same period the previous year. Gunmen have fired into people’s homes, backyards, at parks, subway stations, at cars; you name it. Former NYPD lieutenant, Darrin Porcher, told CBS2 News that NYC has “far eclipsed the number of shootings…
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Israel and the United Arab Emirates agree to a historic normalization accord
On August 31, at 11:14 a.m. local time, a large El Al Boeing 737 aircraft departed from Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv to make the first direct commercial flight from Israel to the United Arab Emirates. The flight, which carried both U.S. and Israeli political figures, such as Jared Kushner, senior advisor to the President of the United States, and Meir Ben Shabbat, Israel’s advisor of national security, marked the easing of a half-century of tensions between Israel and the United Arab Emirates through a recent peace agreement. The Abraham Accord, agreed to by leaders of the two countries less than three weeks before the historic flight departed and…
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QC STUDENT RALLIES FOR UYGHUR RIGHTS
On Sunday, August 30th at 1:00 p.m., a group rallying for Uyghur right—led by Queens College junior Alexander “Shabbos” Kestenbaum—positioned itself in front of the Isiah wall directly in front of the United Nations. The group included members of the Jewish community, as well as prominent Rabbis, political refugees of China, and Holocaust survivors, and they all gathered to express their solidarity and support for the Uyghur Muslims currently facing persecution in China. The Uyghurs, an ethnic Muslim minority that mostly live in northwest China, have faced discrimination from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for decades. The situation escalated dramatically in 2014, when the Chinese government, under General Secretary Xi…
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PSC-CUNY SUES CHANCELLOR MATOS OVER ADJUNCT LAYOFFS
Since the pandemic’s start, the catastrophic effects of the budget cuts against the City University of New York (CUNY) have trickled down to all corners of the community. Recently, CUNY laid off approximately 3,000 adjunct faculty members. This left many without financial stability and healthcare, among other basic needs. It’s worth noting that CUNY received $251 million from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES). The CARES Act is a $2.2 trillion stimulus bill that was passed as a result of the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The CUNY Professional Staff Congress (PSC) filed a lawsuit against the university’s upper-level administration, arguing that funds from the…
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Members of Congress condemn CUNY over use of CARES Act funding
The City University of New York (CUNY) has received funding via the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, a federal bill that allocates billions of dollars to higher-learning institutions. It should be very helpful in the necessary transition to a new normal, but the big question is: Where is that money going towards, if not the students and faculty? According to a press release on the CUNY website, the CARES Act gets its financing from numerous sources, including “the Governor’s Emergency Relief Fund, the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, and the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF).” The Act’s funding is dispersed in two ways: “$12.56…
