USDA program cuts emptying shelves of Alabama food shelters
The effect is being felt by food banks in Alabama who said they will lose millions of pounds in food as a result.
The Community Food Bank of Central Alabama said within the last week and a half, the USDA has ended the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program. A USDA spokesperson stated it's a COVID-era plan that is no longer sustainable.
Cuts have also been made to the Emergency Food Assistance Program. Both programs provided food to places like the Community Food Bank of Central Alabama.
'This is healthy options, healthy shelf-stable goods, but then also healthy fresh vegetable, fresh fruits,' said David McGarr, the food bank's communications manager. 'Things that people need to live a healthy nutritious life.'
McGarr said the changes are why these shelves are empty.
'These funds were frozen in January, and in the last week and a half, they have been cut,' McGarr said.
Alabama House passes bill that would notify parents of child's traffic ticket
Food distribution sites like the Salvation Army said they have not been impacted by the change. CBS 42 News looked around the Salvation Army of Greater Birmingham's food pantry with area commander Robert Lyle.
He said it receives about half of its food from the Community Food Bank of Central Alabama. Despite the cuts to some programs, he's not worried about the future of his pantry.
'We know if things get tough, we can put a plea out, and people will come forward,' Lyle said. 'These churches in this community are loving people.'
The Community Food Bank of Central Alabama said while it's changing some of the ways it operates, it will continue to serve everyone in need. It's asking for donations to help fill the gap of what it has lost because of these program cuts.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Newsweek
an hour ago
- Newsweek
Bangladesh Plane Crash: What We Know About F-7 BGI Training Jets
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A Bangladesh Air Force training aircraft crashed into a school in the country's capital city of Dhaka on Monday, killing at least 20 people. More than 170 people were injured as the F-7 BGI training jet crashed into the Milestone School and College, in the city's northern Uttara neighborhood. The pilot, named as Flight Lieutenant Md. Toukir Islam, was among those killed as the plane hit a two-storey building, said the country's military in a statement. The jet had taken off from Dhaka's AK Khandker Air Force Base for a training flight shortly after 1 p.m. local time, but crashed minutes later due to a mechanical fault, said the statement from the Inter-Services Public Relations Directorate (ISPR). The pilot had attempted to steer the aircraft away from densely populated areas, it added. Members of the Bangladesh Army and the fire service start rescue operations after a Bangladesh Air Force F7 aircraft crashed into a building of Milestone College in Dhaka's Uttara around 1:30 pm on July... Members of the Bangladesh Army and the fire service start rescue operations after a Bangladesh Air Force F7 aircraft crashed into a building of Milestone College in Dhaka's Uttara around 1:30 pm on July 21, 2025 in Dhaka, Bangladesh. More Abdul Goni/Drik/Getty Images Muhammad Yunus, the leader of the country's interim government, offered his "deep condolences" over the "tragic accident", adding in a social media post that the cause of the crash would be investigated. The F-7 BGI is an upgraded version of the F-7, an iteration of the Chinese-designed J-7 itself modeled on the aged, Soviet-era MiG-21. "It's a relatively new version of a very old plane," said Jacob Parakilas, research leader for Defense Strategy, Policy and Capabilities at the European branch of the RAND think tank. The last F-7 BGI came off the line in 2013, Parakilas told Newsweek. The F-7 was designed as an interceptor aircraft, "which in general means that it's optimized for high speed flight," Parakilas said. But take-off and landing can be "less forgiving" than for aircraft with larger wings, he added. "The fact that the base model is old doesn't inherently make it unsafe," Parakilas added. As of early 2025, Bangladesh had 87 combat-capable aircraft, including several variants of the F-7 fighters, according to the U.K.-based defense think tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). The country's air force had 12 F-7 BGI jets, as well as 11 F-7 BGs and 7 F-7 MB aircraft, according to the IISS. Bangladesh also operates a handful of Soviet-era MiG-29 aircraft. Dhaka's military has close ties with China, and has carried out joint exercises with Beijing. The IISS, in the 2025 edition of its annual review of the world's armed forces, said Bangladesh had plans to boost its combat aircraft fleet, and had invested in its fixed-wing training aircraft. Dhaka's "limited military capability is focused on border and domestic security," the think tank said. The government has declared a national day of mourning for Tuesday, domestic media reported. What People Are Saying Muhammad Yunus, the country's chief advisor currently leading the interim government in Dhaka, said in a statement: "The damage to the Air Force and Milestone School and College students, parents and teachers including others is irreparable in this accident. This is a moment of deep pain for the nation." Bangladeshi government advisor, Asif Nazrul, said: "Such a massive, catastrophic accident has never occurred in our national history." The European Union's delegation in Bangladesh said it was "deeply saddened" by the crash, adding: "Our hearts are with the victims, their families, and all those affected."
Los Angeles Times
7 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
LACMA's great Buddhist art collection, pulled out of storage, is an irresistible force
'Realms of the Dharma: Buddhist Art Across Asia' is a large and engaging presentation that includes some of the most splendid sculptures and paintings in the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It's great to see these works again. Most of the art was packed up around eight years ago in preparation for the demolition of the museum's original campus and construction of a new permanent collection building. The current offering of around 180 objects, installed in the temporary exhibition spaces of the Resnick Pavilion, is a version of what was then sent on tour, presented in 2018 at Mexico City's incomparable National Museum of Anthropology. (LACMA Deputy Director Diana Magaloni was former director there.) Subsequent planned travel to art museums in Texas and the Pacific Northwest were derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic, so the work went back into storage. It has been unavailable for hometown public viewing for a very long time. Siddhartha Gautama is accepted by most scholars as the historical figure Shakyamuni Buddha, or sage of the Shakya clan, who was born in Nepal and lived in India around the 5th century BCE. Representations of the religious teacher started out as nearly abstract symbols a few thousand years ago — a starburst shape inside a spiraling whorl, for example, which configures an emanation of light within an eternal flow. A Bodhi tree might signal the sacred place where Buddha's deep insight into enlightenment occurred, or a drawn or carved footprint would be suggestive of following a path. But no biographical texts emerged for several hundred years after his death. Legend and religious doctrine intertwined over centuries, splintering and reconfiguring and taking on new dimensions as they encountered scores of established cultures across South and Southeast Asia and beyond — Daoist philosophy in China, say, or Shinto religion in Japan. Eventually, figurative representations took shape. Needless to say, as they proliferated in what are modern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, Korea and more, Buddha took on a variety of forms. LACMA has scores of fine examples, large and as in an exquisite 8th century brass and silver cast from Kashmir, just 16 inches tall, he is seated with legs crossed and fingers entwined, counting earthly elements like fire and water being absorbed into the mind. In Tang Dynasty China he sits isolated in regal splendor, like an emperor carved in timeless white stone atop an elegantly draped cushion. In the next room, a sturdy Burmese Buddha wearing a transparent garment of reddish lacquered wood raises an oversize right hand in a jumbo gesture of peace, extending an open left hand that seems caught in mid-motion. (There are scores of symbolic Buddhist hand gestures, called mudras.) A life-size columnar figure carved from sober gray schist, familiar from the Gandhara region of Pakistan, likewise raises a peace mudra, but here the cascading folds of his tunic's drapery signal a military history of Greco-Roman interactions dating to the expansionist conquests of Alexander the Great. Any religion that's thousands of years old and practiced in innumerable places will be beyond complicated in doctrine and nuance, and Buddhism is no exception. Deciphering them here is a scholar's task. The names of individual artists are also mostly lost to us. However, what all these different iterations share stylistically, regardless of whatever embellishments surround the Buddha, is a sense of stable, enduring calm at the core. At all times idealized in his physical features, he's the living embodiment of the irresistible force paradox — an immovable power and an unstoppable object all at once. Also on view are ritual tools, like a jewel-encrusted crown, ceremonial knives and a lovely offering cabinet adorned with paintings of fierce, glowering demons that caution anyone who might dare to disturb whatever the cupboard holds. Back off! Sculptures and paintings of poets, lamas, deities and especially bodhisattvas — earthly helpers who have postponed their own entry into nirvana, where suffering disappears, in order to help others find their way — are nearly as numerous and varied as Buddha Shakyamuni himself. Some are wildly extravagant, proliferating heads and arms into delirious phantasms of multiple personality and manifold astounding 15th century painting on cotton cloth is a fiery image of sexual coupling between deities, a crimson female figure with both legs wrapped around an ashy blue man. He stands on one straight leg with the other athletically bent, forming a robust stance designed to stabilize an ecstatic act of energetic intercourse. Like fluttering wings, his 12 elegantly splayed arms wield an array of esoteric symbols around her excited body, while her single arm raises what appears to be a ritual blade high overhead. His flaming-eyed face is frontal, hers is overlaid in perfect profile. The shrewd composition abuts their lips, so that they are just about to touch in a kiss. Chakrasamvara, the blue-man emblem of compassion, is being embraced by his consort, Vajravarahi, bright red symbol of wisdom, in a spectacularly explosive display whose arrested design seems intended as a spur to deep meditation. They are on the brink, and so, it is to be hoped, are we. The installation of 'Realms of the Dharma' is pretty straightforward. The first section introduces Siddhartha Gautama. A few wall texts outline basic Buddhist principles and the religion's two major forms — Theravada (or monastic) and Mahayana (sort of 'Buddhism for all'). From there, most objects are clustered by simple chronology and the region where they were made. That organizational scheme for such varied works of art is standard for permanent museum collections. It's rather unusual at LACMA, though, given the timing. Earlier this month, previews were held of the empty new building for the permanent collection, the David Geffen Galleries, explicitly designed to replace chronology and geography with art clustered by theme. Press materials for 'Dharma' suggest it's a thematic package, with the exhibition as a means to learn about Buddhism. That reduces art to illustration, but happily the installation doesn't come across that way. Art museums are great places to learn about art — about how it's made, by whom and why — but not so great for religious education. 'Realms of the Dharma: Buddhist Art Across Asia' and its handsome scholarly catalog, written by LACMA curator Stephen Little and former associate curator Tushara Bindu Gude, are good at that. But would an American art museum ever do a show on the theme of, say, 'Transubstantiation: Catholic Art Across Europe and the United States,' in order to teach the diverse subtleties and dynastic refinements of a belief in the conversion of bread and wine into flesh and blood? Probably not. Aside from trying to wedge such wildly disparate Catholic artists as Fra Bartolomeo, Paul Cézanne, Tsuguharu Foujita and Andy Warhol into a single coherent exhibition, reducing art to illustration just undermines it. The temptation to frame Buddhist art that way is surely a function of the religion's unfamiliarity, its 'exoticism,' except in shallow pop culture terms. Of the roughly half-billion Buddhists worldwide, less than 1% of Americans identify with it. According to a fascinating March study from the Pew Research Center, Buddhism is today second only to Christianity in experiencing especially large losses in adherents globally, with former followers switching to other faiths or, more often, now expressing no religious affiliation at all. The majority live in California, a primary entry point for Asian immigration to the United States, but barely 100,000 Buddhists are estimated to practice in Los Angeles. Also useful for museum audiences for a permanent collection show would be some acknowledgment of complex issues around the history of this sacred art's ownership. More than one LACMA work has been contested as stolen, including an impressive 15th century painting from Nepal of an important Buddhist spiritual master named Vanaratna. LACMA bought the painting in 1977, when collecting standards were very different than they are now. The wall label, without making a definitive declaration, would be an ideal place to introduce the important subject of case-by-case provenance research, but the subject is ignored. 'Realms of the Dharma' will remain on view for a year, closing in July 2026. That means LACMA's Buddhist masterworks won't be in the Geffen building when it debuts in April next year, or anytime soon after that. (Architect Peter Zumthor is testing paint glazes for some of the Geffen's all-concrete walls, although a final decision on whether to add color has not been made.) The show is sensitively installed in Resnick. Given the art's nearly decade-long hiatus from L.A., it's worth visiting more than once during the next several months, before it disappears again.
Boston Globe
a day ago
- Boston Globe
D-Day veteran and TikTok star ‘Papa Jake' Larson dies at 102
'As Papa would say, love you all the mostest,' his granddaughter posted on his social media accounts. Advertisement Mr. Larson in 2019, before going for a ride in the "The Spirit of Benovia" World War II-era aircraft in Oakland, Calif. Eric Risberg/Associated Press Born Dec. 20, 1922, in Owatonna, Minn., Mr. Larson enlisted in the National Guard in 1938, lying about his age since he was only 15. In 1942, he was sent overseas and was stationed in Northern Ireland. He became operations sergeant and assembled the planning books for the invasion of Normandy. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up He was among the nearly 160,000 Allied troops who stormed the Normandy shore on D-Day, June 6, 1944, surviving machine-gun fire when he landed on Omaha Beach. He made it unhurt to the bluffs that overlook the beach, then studded with German gun emplacements. 'We are the lucky ones,' Mr. Larson told The Associated Press at the 81st anniversary of D-Day in June, speaking amid the immaculate rows of graves at the American cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach. Advertisement 'We are their family. We have the responsibility to honor these guys who gave us a chance to be alive.' He advanced on to participate in the Battle of the Bulge, a grueling month-long fight in Belgium and Luxembourg that was one of the defining moments of the war and of Hitler's defeat. His service earned him a Bronze Star and a French Legion of Honor award. In recent years, he made repeated trips to Normandy for D-Day commemorations — and at every stop, 'Papa Jake' was greeted by people asking for a selfie. In return, he offered up a big hug. One memorable encounter came in 2023, when he came across Bill Gladden, a then-99-year-old British veteran who survived a glider landing on D-Day and a bullet that tore through his ankle. 'I want to give you a hug, thank you. I got tears in my eyes. We were meant to meet,' Mr. Larson told Gladden, as their handsclasped tightly. Gladden died the following year. In his TikTok posts and interviews, Mr. Larson combined humorous anecdotes with somber reminders about the horrors of war. In addition to the invasion of Normandy, Mr. Larson fought in the Battle of the Bulge. Eric Risberg/Associated Press Reflecting to AP on the three years he was in Europe, Larson said he is 'no hero.' Speaking in 2024, he also had a message to world leaders: 'Make peace not war.' He often called himself 'the luckiest man in the world,' and expressed awe at all the attention he was getting. 'I'm just a country boy. Now I'm a star on TikTok,' he said in 2023. Small-town museums and groups around Normandy that work to honor D-Day's heroes and fallen shared tributes online. Advertisement 'He was an exceptional witness and bearer of memory,' the Overlord Museum posted on Facebook. 'He came every year to the museum, with his smile, his humility and his tales that touched all generations. His stories will continue to live. Rest in peace Papa Jake,' it read.
