Brazil s President Jair Bolsonaro holds a box of chloroquine outside the Alvorada Palace, amid the coronavirus outbreak in Brasilia, Brazil, July 23, 2020 [Adriano Machado/Reuters]
On January 17, weeks after other countries in Latin America and around the world began their mass inoculation campaigns, Brazil finally administered its first COVID-19 jab in the state of Sao Paulo using the CoronaVac vaccine developed by the Chinese biopharmaceutical company Sinovac. That first jab was one of the 6 million doses imported by the state-funded Butantan Institute in Sao Paulo, which helped develop the vaccine.
A few days later on January 23, the federally funded Fiocruz Institute announced that it received two million ready-to-use doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines from India and started distributing them across the country. Since then, over one million Brazilians have been vaccinated against the deadly virus.
When President Joe Biden unveiled a $1.9 trillion stimulus proposal earlier this month, few were surprised by the plan's hefty price tag or sweeping scope. Sanders, a former presidential candidate, called the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour a "starvation wage" as he unveiled the proposal for an increase in Congress.
NEW YORK: When President Joe Biden unveiled a $1.9 trillion stimulus proposal earlier this month, few were surprised by the plan's hefty price tag or sweeping scope.
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Updated January 31, 2021
File photo: U.S. President Joe Biden signs an executive order as Vice President Kamala Harris looks on during an event on economic crisis in the State Dining Room of the White House January 22, 2021 in Washington, DC. Alex Wong/Getty Images/AFP
When President Joe Biden unveiled a $1.9 trillion stimulus proposal earlier this month, few were surprised by the plan’s hefty price tag or sweeping scope.
More striking was Biden’s inclusion of a measure to more than double the federal minimum wage to $15.
The move, backed by leading Democrats including left-wing Senator Bernie Sanders, establishes the fight for higher wages as a top priority for the new administration, potentially leading to one of Washington’s boldest adjustments in US social and labor policy in decades.