Media

The MTA announced it has completed an $8.6 million upgrade and renewal at the Murray Hill LIRR station, bringing a major accessibility improvement.

The station now has two elevators, one each for the eastbound and westbound platforms, making the station accessible to all customers for the first time.

At Justin Racette's West Chicago elementary school, instructors rarely assigned homework online before April.

That changed after Howe School of Excellence and other campuses across the country closed their doors in response to the coronavirus pandemic. But weeks after the school switched to online instruction, fewer than half of Racette's 50 third-grade students have even logged into video lessons in Google Classroom, in part because of technology and connectivity barriers.

When Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y., confronted House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., about his repeated use of the term "Chinese coronavirus" roughly a month ago, she was disappointed. While critics noted the term could perpetuate a racist association between the coronavirus and Chinese people, putting Asians in harm's way, Meng recalled McCarthy being dismissive of her concern.

"I thought he would care a little," she told NBC Asian America. "I thought being a member from California, this is something that might be on his radar. These are his constituents, possibly."

Congresswoman Grace Meng on April 28 introduced a bill that would require all federal government agencies to translate written COVID-19-related materials to be into multiple languages for the public.

The COVID-19 Language Access Act would apply to any federal agency that receives coronavirus-related funding.

It would mandate agencies to provide written resources in 19 languages including: Spanish, Arabic, Cambodian, Chinese, Haitian Creole, French, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Russian, Tagalog, Urdu, Vietnamese, Greek, Polish, Thai, and Portuguese.

With over 3,600 COVID-19 deaths in state nursing homes and adult care facilities reported as of April 27, Gov. Cuomo announced that the Department of Health and Attorney General Letitia James will be conducting a joint investigation to determine whether facilities are administering appropriate levels of care to residents.