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This issue of Street Smart is sponsored by:
Our “Widen the Gate” Membership Campaign Is Still Going On New Orleans Mission Doing Fine
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Business Owners Put Up Thorny Plants to Deter Homeless Amid the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles, home and business owners are reportedly planting cacti, thorny rosebushes, and other deterrents to keep the homeless from sleeping in front of their property. The homeless population rose from 16 percent from last year, according to The Los Angeles Times. According to an article from Fox News, the Los Angeles City Council passed a motion recently to investigate and remove illegal fencing that “restricts free passage in the public right-of-way and report to council on these efforts” but nothing has been done as of yet. Chain-link fencing on sidewalks is illegal but rarely enforced, some business owners noted. They say homeless people deter customers and clients from their businesses, leave the streets filthy, and can be dangerous to their property. The barriers are a temporary solution to the more complicated problem of stemming homelessness in the city. “You can’t address [homelessness] by pushing people around,” a resident who does homeless outreach told The Los Angeles Times. “These issues go unaddressed and allow property owners to do what they want to get people out of sight. That’s a problem.” ICE Has Begun Raids to Round Up Undocumented Immigrants Immigration authorities have begun conducting raids in an operation expected to target about 2,000 undocumented immigrants ordered by courts to be removed from the country. The raids, which will focus on recent arrivals to the country, are slated for Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and San Francisco, a senior immigration official said. New Orleans is also on the list, but the city tweeted last week that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it would suspend operations through the weekend in areas hit by Tropical Storm Barry. According to a report by CNN, as of early Sunday evening, there weren't any confirmed reports of migrants being apprehended in Baltimore, Chicago, or New York. Police Chief Vows to Erase Homeless People’s Warrants Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore said he is working to eliminate thousands of homeless people’s old warrants for minor offenses in the coming weeks as part of a solution to help get people off the streets. Moore has been considering a plan to eliminate so-called bench warrants more than five years old for minor offenses such as drinking in public, blocking a sidewalk, and failure to appear in court. According to an article in The Washington Post, his plan calls for dismissing old quality-of-life warrants that can rack up hundreds of dollars in fees and often plague homeless people who can’t pay or show up for court. Moore said he would prefer police to focus on criminal behavior rather than low-level offenses “that get in the way of people’s recovery because they were cited for something one, two, three, four years ago.” |
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Soda and Fruit Juice Linked to Cancer in Major Study Consuming sugary drinks could raise the risk of developing cancer according to scientists, who say policies to crack down on such products could cut rates of the disease. A study published in The BMJ found products like sugar-sweetened drinks and 100 percent fruit juices were linked to the disease, which 1.6 million people in the U.S. were diagnosed with in 2016. Drinking sugary drinks—defined as sugar-sweetened beverages and 100 percent fruit juices—was linked with an overall risk of cancer or breast cancer, the authors wrote. A 100mL per day increase in the amount of sugary drinks an individual consumed was linked with a 22 percent increased risk of breast cancer from the baseline, and an 18 percent increased risk of cancer overall. According to an article in Newsweek, the team found no link between artificially sweetened drinks and the risk of cancer. Spam Costs Nonprofits Up to $100 Million The nonprofit sector could be losing out on nearly $100 million in donations through email appeals because of spam, according to an annual study of email. The EveryAction 2019 Email Deliverability Benchmarks Study estimated that the average email spam rate for nonprofits fell to 20.18 percent last year, from a high of 24.16 percent in 2017. Although it was down from the previous year’s peak, the average spam rate was still well above the 7.03 percent reported in 2015. Spam could be costing the average nonprofit almost $21,000 in revenue each year, or more than $1,000 for every percentage point of email that went to spam. According to a report in the Nonprofit Times, the $20,833.88 lost to spam is based on three hypotheticals around a 100,000-subscriber email list that sends two emails per month. An average spam rate of 20.18 percent would yield $82,604.12, compared with $102,453.12 based on a spam rate of 1 percent. In an ideal world for nonprofits, a 100 percent deliverability rate would raise $103,488. Weekly Jobless Claims Fall to Three-Month Low The number of Americans filing applications for unemployment benefits dropped to a three-month low last week, suggesting sustained labor market strength that could help support a slowing economy. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits declined 13,000 to a seasonally adjusted 209,000 for the week that ended July 6, the lowest level since April, the Labor Department said. Data for the prior week was revised to show 1,000 more applications received than previously reported. According to a report by CNBC, economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims rising to 223,000 in the latest week. The four-week moving average of initial claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends as it irons out week-to-week volatility, fell 3,250 to 219,250 last week.
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Trusting God
“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord” (Jeremiah 17:7).
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