The PIE News: IDP launches scholarship search feature. “IDP has launched a new search feature to easily connect international students with over 5,200 opportunities for scholarships. Available on the IDP website and the IDP Live app, the function gives prospective students the ability to view the criteria and value of scholarships from institutions throughout Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK and the US.”
WIRED: Hurricane Ian Destroyed Their Homes. Algorithms Sent Them Money. “WHEN Hurricane Ian churned over Florida in late September, it left a trail of destruction from high winds and flooding. But a week after the storm passed, some people in three of the worst-hit counties saw an unexpected beacon of hope. Nearly 3,500 residents of Collier, Charlotte, and Lee Counties received a push notification on their smartphones offering $700 cash assistance, no questions asked. A Google algorithm deployed in partnership with nonprofit GiveDirectly had estimated from satellite images that those people lived in badly damaged neighborhoods and needed some help.”
Bleeping Computer: Ukraine arrests cybercrime gang operating over 400 phishing sites. “The Ukrainian cyberpolice force arrested nine members of a criminal group that operated over 400 phishing websites crafted to appear like legitimate EU portals offering financial assistance to Ukrainians.”
The Art Newspaper: Ukraine misses out on UK cultural protection money. “The UK’s Cultural Protection Fund has not got an allocation of money for emergency assistance for Ukraine in the current financial year, The Art Newspaper can disclose…. Although the fund was able to allocate £60,000 for Ukraine in March, no money has been made available in the current financial year, despite the tragic and widespread destruction of heritage buildings and museums which continues unabated.”
Route Fifty: New Online Hub to Help Cities Apply for Federal Infrastructure Funding. “The Local Infrastructure Hub is bringing together public sector groups and nonprofits to help local leaders navigate the complicated Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act application process in order to win grants. Experts will provide free coaching, data analysis and support, among other things, in developing the applications.”
Washington Post: As Pandemic Aid Ends, Struggling Families Face a Housing Nightmare. “Covid relief kept Holly Williams and her sons out of a shelter. Now that it’s gone, will they be able to keep their home?”
The Mainichi: Japanese town mistakenly pays $366K in COVID subsidies to single household. “The municipal government arranged at a bank on April 3 to transfer 100,000 yen each to the accounts of 463 households that had applied for the subsidy by the end of March. A town employee later submitted a written request to the bank to transfer the 46.3 million yen. However, they mistakenly made the top name on the recipient list the representative of the entire group, causing the massive overpayment to that person.”
Route Fifty: ‘There’s a Large Amount of Fraud Out There,’ Says Special IG for Pandemic Recovery. “After battles over his office’s jurisdiction and staffing and funding challenges, the special inspector general for pandemic recovery is hitting his stride. ‘I think we’re doing great things. I think we’re doing things that other law enforcement agencies aren’t doing,’ said Special Inspector General for Pandemic Recovery Brian Miller. ‘We have built-up the expertise in these programs to the point where we can advise federal prosecutors.’”
Emerging Europe: ‘Start-ups and tech will be key to rebuilding’: Google launches Ukraine Support Fund. “Google for Startups has launched a Ukraine Support Fund worth five million US dollars to allocate equity-free cash awards throughout 2022. According to the IT Association of Ukraine, around 85 per cent of the country’s IT workers continue to deliver services for their clients. Some 70 per cent are doing so from safe areas within Ukraine, while a further 16 per cent (mainly women) have relocated to other countries.”
Route Fifty: Federal Pandemic Aid is Providing a Boost to City Housing Programs. “City officials are tapping American Rescue Plan Act dollars to expand affordable housing and reduce homelessness, challenges that predate Covid-19 but that were also heightened by it.”
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: Arkansas Health Department to continue free covid testing for uninsured even without federal help. “Although a federal program is no longer paying for it, the Arkansas Department of Health will continue to provide free coronavirus testing for the uninsured at its local health units around the state, a spokeswoman said. Over the past two years, the Health Department has received $13.4 million from the federal Covid-19 Uninsured Program for providing the tests — more than any other health care provider in the state, according to data from a federal website.”
Route Fifty: The ‘Massive’ Task Awaiting State Medicaid Agencies. “The end of a public health emergency would mean states losing hundreds of billions in funding for the health care program, and verifying whether millions of enrollees are still eligible.”
Route Fifty: There’s No Final Number Yet for Pandemic Fraud, Oversight Leaders Tell Congress. “Total fraud levels in pandemic relief programs are upwards of $100 billion, but getting a clear estimate is made difficult by data gaps and ongoing fraud recovery efforts, officials said at a Senate hearing.”
NPR: Millions of children will miss healthy school meals when pandemic relief expires. “When schools pivoted to virtual learning early in the pandemic, the National School Lunch Program was thrown into chaos. Millions of children rely on school meals to keep hunger at bay, so school nutrition directors scrambled to adopt new, creative ways to distribute food to families. Some of these changes were improvements on the status quo, they say. And as part of pandemic relief legislation, the federal Food and Nutrition services agency waived the requirement that schools serve meals in a group setting, increased school-year reimbursement rates to summer levels for school food programs and granted more flexibility in how food is prepared and packaged.”
The Conversation: How AI helped deliver cash aid to many of the poorest people in Togo. “The simple idea behind this approach, as we explained in the journal Nature on March 16, 2022, is that wealthy people use phones differently from poor people. Their phone calls and text messages follow different patterns, and they use different data plans, for example. Machine learning algorithms – which are fancy tools for pattern recognition – can be trained to recognize those differences and infer whether a given mobile subscriber is wealthy or poor.”
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