Ohio picks 1st $1M winner
A southwestern Ohio woman won the state’s first $1 million Vax-a-Million vaccination incentive prize, while a Dayton-area teen was awarded the first full-ride college scholarship offered by the program, the state announced Wednesday night.
The winners, whose names were drawn from more than 1.5 million entrants, were selected in a random drawing Monday and had their information confirmed before the formal announcement at the end of the Ohio Lottery’s Cash Explosion TV show.
The lottery announced Abbigail Bugenske, of Silverton, was the $1 million winner, while Joseph Costello, of Englewood, was the scholarship winner.
More than 2.7 million adults signed up for the $1 million prize, and more than 104,000 children ages 12 to 17 entered the drawing for the college scholarship. Four more $1 million and college scholarship winners will be announced each Wednesday for the next four weeks.
Homeland Security budget kept the same
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told lawmakers the Biden administration will seek $52.2 billion in funding for the coming fiscal year, leaving the agency’s budget unchanged despite the strains of a migration surge along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Mr. Mayorkas provided lawmakers with an overview of the funding targets for fiscal 2022, which begins in October, and said a detailed request would be released Friday. He said it will include $1.2 billion for border infrastructure and $345 million in additional discretionary spending for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to address backlogs in asylum and naturalization processing, as well as funding needed to admit as many as 125,000 refugees, as President Joe Biden has directed.
The Biden administration will also boost funding for DHS programs designed to improve climate change preparedness, cybersecurity protection and countering violent extremism, said Mr. Mayorkas, who has identified domestic terrorists as the most urgent, lethal threat to the American public.
Arizona revises rules for ‘medical rationing’
Arizona has revised the standards for allocating scarce medical resources during crises, such as the coronavirus pandemic, to resolve a months-old federal complaint that claimed the previous standards discriminated against older residents, people of color and people with disabilities.
The revised crisis care standards reflect legal requirements and best practices to address the needs of people with disabilities and older adults, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights said in a statement on Tuesday, The Arizona Republic reported.
Several advocacy groups, including the Arizona Center for Disability Law and The Arc of Arizona, filed the complaint in July 2020. They argued the previous protocols were putting some residents at risk by raising the potential for some people with disabilities to be perceived as having a shorter life expectancy, which meant less medical care.