$900B COVID relief bill passed by Congress, sent to Trump WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress passed a $900 billion pandemic relief package Monday night that would finally deliver long-sought cash to businesses and individuals and resources to vaccinate a nation... AP NEWS

  Summary of what is in the bill --the Hill

Low-income children wait months for USDA food aid to replace school meals 'It should be a four-alarm fire,' says one expert, given the high hunger rates among families. Helena Bottemiller Evich POLITICO

Millions of low-income schoolchildren have gone almost an entire semester without receiving federal payments to help their families buy groceries months after Congress authorized the aid — even as child hunger reaches record highs in the U.S.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/12/19/world/covid-19-coronavirus#boris-johnson-orders-a-severe-lockdown-saying-a-more-infectious-variant-of-the-virus-is-ripping-through-britain

LONDON — Alarmed by what he called a faster-spreading variant of the coronavirus, Prime Minister Boris Johnson abruptly reversed course on Saturday and imposed a wholesale lockdown on London and most of England’s southeast.

The decision, which Mr. Johnson announced after an emergency meeting of his cabinet, came after the government got new evidence of a variant first detected several weeks ago in Kent, southeast of London, which the prime minister asserted was 70 percent more transmissible than previous versions. Cabinet ministers were told that in London, cases had nearly doubled in the last week, with the new variant accounting for 60 percent of those.