REGIONAL NEWS
Massachusetts school mask mandate extended to Jan. 15, 2022
An indoor mask requirement for Massachusetts public schools will remain in effect through the start of 2022, education officials announced Tuesday.
Sports Betting
Massachusetts Senate struggles for sports betting consensus
Three months after he declared the Massachusetts Senate "ready" to approve legislation legalizing sports betting, Sen. Eric Lesser on Tuesday suggested that his chamber still has not reached consensus on the House-backed idea. But he said it's still a "top-tier issue."
Health
Marijuana vaping among teens has more than doubled since 2013
Teen vaping of marijuana doubled between 2013 and 2020, indicating that young people may be swapping out joints, pipes or bongs for vape pens, according to a new study. Researchers also found that adolescents who say they vaped cannabis within the last 30 days increased 7-fold — from 1.6% to 8.4% — during the same period. The report was published in JAMA Pediatrics on Monday by researchers who analyzed 17 studies involving nearly 200,000 adolescents in the U.S. and Canada. Overall, they say,...
Connecting Point
Inequity
Black and Latino families continue to bear pandemic's great economic toll in U.S.
Jonathan Eta had managed to keep his head above water after he lost his job as an auto detailer in Southern California at the start of the pandemic. But last month, the emergency unemployment benefits he relied on expired. "Basically, now we're just out on our own, you know?" he says. Eta, who was born in Honduras, lives in the San Fernando Valley, where he's a single father to his three school-aged children. The financial strain he'd staved off for 17 months has arrived. He's now three...
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More News
Hiring crisis in child care: 'We're stuck in a market that's broken'
In western Massachusetts, the cost and availability of child care can be a major barrier to employment for some parents. During the pandemic, it has become an even bigger problem, in part because day care providers themselves are having a harder time recruiting employees.
