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SNAP applications processing faster, backlog and concerns over benefit cuts continues 

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:19:41 GMT

LEANDER, Texas (KXAN) — Tiesa Hollaway surveys the shelves. The food pantry at Hill Country Community Ministries has fresh fruits and vegetables, a variety of breads, milk and canned goods.Hollaway quickly walks through the small space — 900 square feet — smiling at a handful of volunteers who are preparing for a busy day."We are so grateful," Hollaway said. "Our shelves are full. I know that there are a lot of food pantries, whether it's ours or anyone all over Central Texas, that are struggling, a lot of the food pantries are struggling."Hill Country Community Ministries food pantry in Leander. (KXAN Photo/Arezow Doost)Hollaway is familiar with that struggle. Just last month she said she had to write a check for $10,000 to buy food just to keep up with the growing need. "We served over 91,000 people last year," she explained. "We're seeing a 49% increase in new families in May — just this month, we're not even done with May yet — a...

Power outage impacting Schenectady County

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:19:41 GMT

SCHENECTADY COUNTY, N.Y. (NEWS10) -- More than 20,000 National Grid customers lost power Sunday morning in Schenectady County, according to an online outage map. The outages span across the city of Schenectady and Rotterdam.A National Grid spokesperson and Schenectady Fire Chief Don Mareno told NEWS10 the outage is attributed to two incidents in Rotterdam. A fire at a BBQ restaurant on Mariaville Road between 6:00 and 6:30 A.M. that impacted a power line, and a vehicle that crashed into a power pole on Altamont Avenue, are both contributing to the issues.Estimated restoration times range between 9:45 A.M. and 10:15 A.M., but those times are subject to change. NEWS10 is working to learn more and will provide updates when they are available.

Bobby LeFebre, Colorado’s outgoing poet laureate, on 4 years of “making magic of the mundane”

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:19:41 GMT

Bobby LeFebre’s mind is a repository for the beginning of poems.Dozens of fledgling verses take flight in the Denverite’s brain every day. LeFebre witnesses an interaction, overhears a conversation, stumbles across a particularly poignant scenic view and can’t stop himself from converting those little moments into words and phrases that may or may not make it out of the nest and into his next work.Just don’t ask to look at the notes app on his phone, where he tries to capture it all.“It’s a big mess,” LeFebre said.The 41-year-old is wrapping up his four-year term as Colorado’s eighth poet laureate. LeFebre is the youngest of the state’s poet laureates and the first poet of color to hold the title.LeFebre’s ability to connect with a younger, more diverse audience made his tenure stand out, said Christy Costello, interim director of Colorado Creative Industries, a department in the state’s Office of Economic Development...

Keeler: How did Nuggets’ Michael Porter Jr. find peace? By giving children hope. “This guy’s a class act. The real deal.”

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:19:41 GMT

Kaleena Patrick could’ve scaled that smile to Heaven. No COVID. No Delta variant. No gasping. No pain. Just Taurean Taylor grinning at his phone like it was a winning scratch ticket.“I didn’t know that they’d been talking for an extended period of time,” Patrick said of her son, Taurean. “He’s like, ‘Yeah, I talk to MPJ all the time.’“I’m like, ‘What?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah. That’s my friend.’”He showed her his phone. Yep. That MPJ. The Nuggets’ Michael Porter Jr., texting from Portland.See, on May 16, 2021, Porter had drawn up the perfect play. The day after the Nuggets’ regular-season finale, he was coming by Aurora to hang out. Taurean, a two-time cancer survivor now wrestling with the coronavirus, just had to hang in there.“Taurean was so excited,” Patrick recalled. “He was like, ‘Mom, MPJ is going to come see me tomorrow.’ And he passed away that morning.”Taurean was 13. His light left us too soon, a story unfinished.Yet when Kaleena texted the Nuggets forward to thank him, she disc...

Eating disorder patients say punitive, threatening methods at Denver treatment center left them with new trauma

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:19:41 GMT

Lizzy Earhart didn’t know much about Eating Recovery Center when she agreed to get treatment there in October 2020. She’d already received treatment for anorexia at another treatment provider in Denver, but she’d relapsed immediately after. But Eating Recovery Center was big, well-known. It seemed her best option.But the months she spent there reinforced her illness, the 21-year-old said, and the punitive environment left her with new trauma.If she didn’t comply with treatment, she wouldn’t be allowed outside the facility. Patients were lined up each morning to be weighed wearing nothing but ill-fitting mesh or paper gowns. When Earhart expressed concerns about her treatment plans, her psychiatrist told her she was out of options and that her concerns were “just the eating disorder talking.”“I wouldn’t go outside for a week, two weeks at a time. It just made my anxiety and other issues a lot worse,” Earhart said. “And...

Kiszla: Why are Nuggets in control of NBA Finals? In superstar-driven league, Nikola Jokic versus Jimmy Butler is a mismatch.

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:19:41 GMT

In the NBA Finals, Jimmy Butler is wrestling with a basketball god, and that’s a tussle Nikola Jokic is destined to win.“It’s never over. Nobody is ever counted out,” Butler vowed Saturday, with Miami trailing the Nuggets 1-0 in this best-of-seven series. “Once you get to four, it’s over with. So down 0-1, we know we are going to get to four.”The Nuggets, however, have the shorter path and more routes to get to four victories, because Jokic is a sorcerer who sees a game beyond a muggle’s imagination. And the Heat, as even coach Erik Spoelstra admits, has no solid answers for Joker’s genius.Butler is no slouch. He has carried Miami, the eighth seed from the East, to the NBA Finals. By any measure, including the voting results from the All-NBA teams, Jimmy Buckets was among the top 10 players in the league this season.Jokic, however, is transforming the way basketball is played before our eyes, in a manner Magic Johnson and only a handful of others have done before him. This champions...

How bootleg merch hurts (and helps) the Denver Nuggets, Blucifer, and other Colorado icons

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:19:41 GMT

Derek Friedman would like to sell you an officially licensed Denver Nuggets NBA Finals T-shirt for $40. But if you decide to go with a $20 knock-off, he won’t be upset.“The biggest risk isn’t for somebody who just wants something with the Nuggets logo on it,” said Friedman, owner of the Denver-based SportsFan chain, of the counterfeit gear currently flooding the Denver market. “It’s that you get what you pay for.”With the Nuggets in the NBA Finals, Denver has become fertile ground for opportunistic producers and sellers of counterfeit merchandise. But even without the pop-up, Nuggets-themed tents now decorating street corners around the city, Denver designers, online sellers, and street vendors risk copyright crackdowns all the time. Their unlicensed shirts, hats, jerseys and other merchandise tout icons ranging from rock stars Taylor Swift and the Grateful Dead to sports teams like the Nuggets and Colorado Rockies, to Casa Bonita and the Bi...

Can Vaping CBD Prevent Panic Attacks?- One Seattle-Based Team May Soon Have The Answer

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:19:41 GMT

To read the original article about CBD for Panic Attacks at Real Tested CBD.Most people involved in the hemp industry have probably heard about CBD’s anti-anxiety effects. There are already a few randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials that suggest CBD has a phenomenal impact on patients with social anxiety disorder. There’s also some evidence CBD could reduce night terrors in patients with PTSD.However, there’s not as much data regarding CBD’s effect on acute anxiety symptoms. For instance, could a high dose of CBD immediately reduce a panic attack? Does CBD help lessen the severity or frequency of this troubling issue?Although we don’t yet have a clear answer to these questions, a few Washington State researchers are interested in CBD’s relationship to acute anxiety. In fact, the Seattle-based Receptor Life Sciences just announced significant funding to analyze this issue.What Can We Expect From Receptor Life Sciences’ Upcoming CBD Trial?On April 7th, the new company Recept...

Interim housing in San Jose might be cheap at first, but long-term costs could quickly surge

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:19:41 GMT

As homeless encampments continue to sprout around San Jose’s streets and waterways, city leaders are promising a rapid housing fix — over 1,000 interim units, supposedly at a bargain price.But a new estimate by the city’s budget director shows the long-term, ongoing costs associated with the strategy could start adding up quickly for San Jose.If the city completes its plan to add 1,439 interim housing beds, hotel rooms and safe parking sites, the ongoing expense could spiral upwards to about $60 million by 2030 — more than twice what it plans to spend on the effort next year.The ballooning costs come at a particularly difficult economic moment: State and federal funding for the city to combat homelessness could end up slowing down dramatically as pandemic relief fades and California faces a hazy financial future with a looming billion-dollar deficit. This potentially puts San Jose on the hook to shoulder millions of dollars in costs from its own coffers if it doesn’...

Thousands of California families are still homeschooling their children. What’s keeping them from the classroom?

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:19:41 GMT

Ifza Khan’s mornings don’t start with the school bell.Instead, the 11-year-old gets out of bed, walks downstairs and heads to her dining room table, where her mom, Arsala, leads Ifza and her two siblings in the day’s lessons. Some days they join 12 other families for a park meet-up or a field trip to a local museum. On other days, they’ll gather for in-person, à la carte lessons at different locations, which focus on everything from horseback riding to robotics engineering.For years, the Khans have been among thousands of California families homeschooling their children. But today, they’ve got much more company. Since the year before the pandemic shut down schools, the number of California kids being homeschooled has skyrocketed by 70% — and despite a return to in-person learning, many are not going back.“When you’re in public school, it’s almost like a death march: you’re going to go through this set of classes whether you like it or not,” said Leigh Cline o...