The partial government shutdown is a double-whammy for Cara and Philip Mangone, a married couple from Philadelphia. Both are agents with the Transportation Safety Administration, both working full time at the Philadelphia airport. Neither knows when they might again start drawing their paychecks.
Part-time jobs are out of the question — they work opposite shifts timed to make sure one of them is always home with their kids, ages 2 and 5. So donations of food and diapers have been a real help as savings are being stretched thin.
“Every penny that we don’t have to spend is helpful,” Cara Mangone said Wednesday as she picked up donated goods being distributed at the airport by fellow members of the American Federation of Government Employees.
The shutdown has brought an outpouring of generosity to TSA agents and other federal employees who are working without pay. Food, financial help, haircuts and toiletries are among the donated goods and services. TSA screeners start at about $24,000 a year, and most make between $26,000 and $35,000, less than many other government employees, although some earn more because of seniority, overtime or level of management responsibility.
On Wednesday, donations of diapers, juice, garbage bags, canned soup and boxes of Ramen noodles were being unloaded onto luggage carts at the valet drop-off curb at Orlando International Airport, to be distributed to TSA workers there the next day.
DETROIT — Former Gov. John Engler will resign as interim president of Michigan State University amid public backlash over his comments about women and girls sexually assaulted by now-imprisoned campus sports doctor Larry Nassar, a member of the school’s Board of Trustees said Wednesday.
Joel Ferguson told The Associated Press that board members expected to receive a letter Wednesday from Engler spelling out the reasons he would step down and the effective date of his resignation.
“Yes, John is going to resign,” he said.
Engler had resisted earlier pressure to resign. His sudden reversal tops off a stormy period for the university under Engler and is the second time a Michigan State president left during the Nassar scandal.
The final straw for the university’s Board of Trustees came last week when Engler told The Detroit News that Nassar’s victims had been in the “spotlight” and are “still enjoying that moment at times, you know, the awards and recognition.”
NAIROBI, Kenya — The death toll from an extremist attack on a luxury hotel and shopping complex in Nairobi climbed to 21, plus the five militants killed, police said Wednesday in the aftermath of the brazen overnight siege by al-Shabab gunmen. Two people accused of facilitating the attack were arrested.
The number of those killed at the DusitD2 complex rose with the discovery of six more bodies at the scene and the death of a wounded police officer, said Joseph Boinnet, inspector-general of Kenyan police. Twenty-eight people were hurt and taken to the hospital, he said.
In a televised address to the nation earlier in the day, President Uhuru Kenyatta announced that the all-night operation by security forces to retake the complex was over and that all of the extremists had been killed.
“We will seek out every person that was involved in the funding, planning and execution of this heinous act,” he vowed.
In an attack that demonstrated al-Shabab’s continued ability to strike Kenya’s capital despite setbacks on the battlefield, extremists stormed the place with guns and explosives. Security camera footage released to local media showed a suicide bomber blowing himself up in a grassy area in the complex, the flash visible along with smoke billowing from the spot where he had been standing.
From Associated Press