In today’s rundown: The D.C. Council relies on cuts to welfare programs to close a budget gap. | A look at a program that helps difficult-to-employ residents find jobs. | Young journalists investigate child trafficking. | Remembering Elizabeth Edwards.
— The D.C. Council has approved a spending plan that includes controversial changes to welfare programs but avoids higher taxes, reports The Washington Post. The welfare changes include cutting off direct assistance after five years.
— The Post also takes an in-depth look at a program that helps the District’s hardest to employ residents prepare for jobs. For six months The Post followed participants in the Project Empowerment program, D.C.’s most expensive job training program with a 7,000 name waiting list.
— Youth Radio has teamed up with NPR to produce a series of investigations into child sex trafficking in the United States. The pieces focus on Oakland, CA and use “interviews, eyewitness reporting and city records to piece together what life is like for girls when they become trapped by pimps — and how law enforcement continues to criminalize girls the state legally defines as sexually exploited victims.”
— The world is remembering Elizabeth Edwards as a woman “shaped by a life of losses.” Edwards died yesterday after a six-year battle with breast cancer.
