--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Monday, November 22nd. I'm Shamita Basu. Duarte Geraldino is off. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news and how the world's best journalists are covering them. It's been one week since President Biden signed the trillion-dollar infrastructure bill into law. Now he's urging his party to keep making progress on the second plank of his legislative agenda, Build Back Better.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This is a $2 trillion bill to revamp the country's health care, climate policy, education, and tax laws. House Democrats passed it on Friday. Now it heads to the Senate, where it faces significant challenges.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Washington Post describes this bill as something that would be one of the most significant overhauls of domestic policy in generations. The Post has a really helpful explainer that breaks down this massive spending package into buckets.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: One of the buckets is family care. There's currently billions of dollars earmarked for programs to support families with kids. Pre-K would be guaranteed at a national level for three- and four-year-olds.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The White House says this is the biggest expansion in public education since public high schools were created 100 years ago. Under this plan, the Child Tax Credit, which gives parents at least $3,000 for each child under 18 years old, that would be extended for another year.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Workers would also be entitled to a guaranteed four weeks of paid family and medical leave starting in 2024. But West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin has come out against the paid leave measure, so it's not clear if that will end up in the final bill.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Another bucket is health care. For states that don't currently participate in Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, low-income earners would be able to buy a plan without paying monthly premiums until 2025.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And Medicare benefits could get a boost, too, including a plan to lower prescription drug costs for millions of seniors. And a third bucket is climate policy. This bill would dedicate over half a trillion dollars toward combating climate change.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Post says most of these funds would go to tax breaks for companies to green up their own infrastructure, things like investing in solar panels or making their buildings more energy efficient.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Consumers would get tax credits too, which could make things like buying an electric car significantly more affordable. A big sticking point in this bill so far, and this will definitely shape the debate over in the Senate, is the price tag.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The White House claims the spending is fully accounted for and that they'll make up the difference by stepping up tax enforcement. A data analysis from the Congressional Budget Office was enough to convince moderate Democrats in the House.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Will it be enough for Senate Democrats? We're about to find out. More than 770,000 people have died of COVID in the United States. It's difficult to comprehend what each loss has meant for so many families, especially for children.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's estimated that more than 140,000 kids lost a caregiver. The CDC says that's one out of every 500 kids in the U.S.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: I think there's just generally a lot of concern that there hasn't been enough of a concerted effort, especially nationwide, to focus on these kids who have lost caregivers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's Anna North, who wrote about this for Vox. She says the U.S. is facing a childhood grief crisis.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Her reporting shows that childhood grief is linked to depression, dropping out of school, even suicide. And what's making things even harder for kids who've lost someone in the past two years is the social isolation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We're in a time, especially in 2020, when people couldn't get in-person support from those around them. They couldn't get hugs. You know, just like your basic things, people bringing food to the house, all that stuff became so difficult.
--:-- Shamita Basu: North spoke with several grieving families. 10-year-old Natasha in New York lost her father to COVID-19 last year.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The family couldn't visit him in the hospital. They only got news about his progress through phone calls. One day, they got the call that he was not going to get better. When he died, Natasha's mother says she cried for four or five days straight.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There wasn't really a funeral that Natasha could go to. She couldn't be with her extended family to grieve this loss. She couldn't be with her friends to help distract her or help her process and mourn because everyone was in isolation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: North says death and grief are already complicated topics for kids to understand. Another mother I talked to, Odessa Evelyn, talked about how her boys when they lost their uncle they didn't get to go to a funeral.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So they were kind of confused about what had happened. And her youngest son said, like, well, I don't get it. You know, we didn't go to a funeral. So is he not really dead? Like, is he coming back?
--:-- Shamita Basu: Research from the CDC found that Native, Black, and Hispanic kids are more likely to have lost a caregiver during the pandemic.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's a real sense that these communities will bear the brunt of the long-term effects of childhood bereavement. North spoke to some advocates who said they're worried that there isn't much attention being paid to these kids and the potential for trauma.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There are a few concrete suggestions in this story. Research shows monetary aid can really help. Having a financial safety net can make a huge difference for a family that just lost someone.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Other suggestions include training teachers to recognize and respond to grief and making therapy available to students and their families.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As America's labor shortage continues, economists can't agree on why there are currently millions more job openings than there are people looking for work.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But Fortune magazine looks at an unusual idea for a fix, getting rid of the resume. And this idea, it's coming from someone who knows the ins and outs of recruiting and staffing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He's Sayuki Hidekuba. He's the CEO of Recruit Holdings Company. That's a company that owns giant job search sites like Indeed.com and Glassdoor.
--:-- Sayuki Hidekuba: Many businesses are using the same old hiring tactics from a decade ago. But for a lot of job openings today, combing through traditional resumes is not going to help managers find the right candidates.
--:-- Sayuki Hidekuba: Instead, the CEO says it's better to use the application process to start asking people questions that actually relate to the job. That way they can assess a person based on what they can do, not how well they format a resume.
--:-- Sayuki Hidekuba: He also points out the old way of hiring doesn't take into account the needs of the candidates. One example he gave truck drivers. They are badly needed across America.
--:-- Sayuki Hidekuba: Idecoba company introduced a chat hiring process for them. And that because truckers spend most of their days on the road. Many don't have laptops or the time to deal with making resumes look nice.
--:-- Sayuki Hidekuba: Idekaba says he's well-positioned to meet the moment. Indeed.com now helps double the amount of people find jobs than before the pandemic.
--:-- Sayuki Hidekuba: About 20 hires every minute. But he says it's going to take more than that to fix the mismatch between job openings and job seekers.
--:-- Sayuki Hidekuba: And a big piece of that could be rethinking old ideas about resumes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You know that feeling when you're trying to get some work done, you're really trying to focus, but then, yep, you got a text from a friend.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So, OK, you quickly respond. Then back to work. It's an email about that thing. And now you have to put a date in the calendar so you don't forget the thing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So, OK, you do that. Now back to work. But first. All right, you get the point. We've all been there. We are living in an age of over notification.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I don't know about you, but it's something I have to manage on a daily basis. And according to the Wall Street Journal, the distraction of constant pings and dings was probably amplified during all the time that you spent working remotely.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The journal cites research that says every time you get distracted by something, it takes an average of 25 minutes to mentally get back on track.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, this isn't the kind of piece that tells you to just turn off your phone and go for a long walk outside, although that does sound nice.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The journal acknowledges you probably can't walk away from your notifications forever. So it's better to have some new strategies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Like try blocking off time to do focused work. Let your co-workers know you're not going to be available for instant responses.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And that way you can aim to work uninterrupted for a half hour at a time, followed by a few minutes for a break. Start by just putting it on your calendar, then see if you can make it a habit.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It might help you feel more in control. You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And while you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News Plus partners. We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
