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During the first week of every month, the white sheets of paper show up, jammed behind doorknobs, laid on porch chairs or tables, dropped on concrete patios. Janahya Sugick, a nail technician and mother of three, received her first late notice in June 2020, after her hours had been cut and her paycheck had dwindled because of the pandemic. Soon after, her apartment complex filed for eviction. But even though she couldn’t immediately pay, Sugick was not evicted. Instead, she is regularly served eviction papers and then charged hundreds of dollars in fees to avoid removal, in a way that she and other residents of the Brooks Crossing apartments, a 224-unit complex south of Atlanta, say has become commonplace, the Washington Post reported. Management of Brooks Crossing has filed for eviction against its tenants more than any other landlord in the Atlanta area, a total of 427 times since April 2020, according to data from the Atlanta Regional Commission. That equates to 1.9 eviction notices per unit there between April 2020 and early December 2021.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned people on December 30 not to go on cruises, regardless of their vaccination status, because of onboard outbreaks fueled by the omicron variant, the Associated Press reported. The CDC said that it has more than 90 cruise ships under investigation or observation as a result of COVID-19 cases. The agency did not disclose the number of infections. “The virus that causes COVID-19 spreads easily between people in close quarters on board ships, and the chance of getting COVID-19 on cruise ships is very high,” even if people are fully vaccinated and have received a booster, the CDC said. The Cruise Lines International Association said that it was disappointed with the new recommendations, saying the industry was singled out despite the fact it follows stricter health protocols than other travel sectors. The decision “is particularly perplexing considering that cases identified on cruise ships consistently make up a very slim minority of the total population onboard,” a statement said. “The majority of those cases are asymptomatic or mild in nature, posing little to no burden on medical resources onboard or onshore.” In March 2020, as the coronavirus took hold in the U.S., the CDC put a halt to all cruises for what turned out to be 15 months. Last June, it allowed ships to resume sailing under new strict new conditions. In August, as the delta variant surged, the agency warned people who are at risk of severe illness despite being vaccinated not to go on cruises. The CDC on Dec. 30 also recommended that passengers get tested and quarantine for five days after docking, regardless of their vaccination status and even if they have no symptoms.

Michigan likely paid about $8.5 billion in fraudulent jobless benefits over a 19-month period during the coronavirus pandemic, far more than previously estimated, according to a report released yesterday by the state’s unemployment agency, the Associated Press reported. The figure, provided by Deloitte, came more than a year after the firm said the agency expected fraud losses in the “hundreds of millions” of dollars. State auditors have since reported that the agency improperly paid $3.9 billion to claimants who were later deemed ineligible. There is “some overlap” between those payments — made to self-employed and gig workers who began qualifying for federal aid because of the pandemic — and the overall $8.5 billion estimate, said Julia Dale, director of the Unemployment Insurance Agency. “My initial reaction to seeing these numbers is one of outrage and certainly frustration,” she told The Associated Press. “These are not the type of numbers that we had hoped to see or want to see.” She added, however, that Michigan is doing a much better job blocking fraud, noting it avoided an estimated $43.7 billion in fraud from March 2020 through September 2021. The state paid $34.5 billion in benefits over that time. The percentage of payments involving likely imposter fraud was 0.46% last fiscal year, down from 9.7% between March 2020 and October 2020. The portion paid for likely intentional misrepresentation fraud — when real claimants may fabricate income-verification documents or knowingly not report information that would make them ineligible — was 0.11%, a drop from 20.1%.

Hundreds of flights were cancelled yesterday as the omicron variant creates havoc both for travelers and for airlines that are having to cobble together flight crews as pilots, flight attendants and ground crews become infected or are exposed to others who have been, the Associated Press reported. More than 850 flights were cancelled by midday yesterday and that number has ticked higher throughout the day, according to data from the flight-tracking website FlightAware. There were nearly 1,300 cancellations for flights entering, leaving or inside the U.S. Tuesday, and about 1,500 on Monday. Cancellations began to spike the day before Christmas during what is already a buzzing pace for airlines this time of year. Delta, United and JetBlue have all said that the omicron variant was causing enough staffing issues that flights were cancelled. SkyWest led U.S. carriers with 195 cancellations, followed by United with 158 and Delta with 103. SkyWest, a regional airline based in Utah, has suffered an elevated level of cancellations after severe weather hit several of its hubs, but it’s reporting the same staffing issues due to COVID-19.

Holiday sales rose at the fastest pace in 17 years, even as shoppers grappled with higher prices, product shortages and a raging new COVID-19 variant in the last few weeks of the season, according to one spending measure, the Associated Press reported. Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks all kinds of payments including cash and debit cards, reported Sunday that holiday sales had risen 8.5% from a year earlier. Mastercard SpendingPulse had expected an 8.8% increase. The results, which covered Nov. 1 through Dec. 24, were fueled by purchases of clothing and jewelry. Holiday sales were up 10.7% compared with the pre-pandemic 2019 holiday period. By category, clothing rose 47%, jewelry 32%, electronics 16%. Online sales were up 11% from a year ago and 61% from 2019. Department stores registered a 21% increase over 2020.

At least five Republican-led states have extended unemployment benefits to people who’ve lost jobs over vaccine mandates — and a smattering of others may soon follow, the Washington Post reported. Workers who quit or are fired for cause — including for defying company policy — are generally ineligible for jobless benefits. But Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Kansas and Tennessee have carved out exceptions for those who won’t submit to the multi-shot coronavirus vaccine regimens that many companies now require. Similar ideas have been floated in Wyoming, Wisconsin and Missouri. Critics contend that these states are incentivizing people to skip shots that public health experts say offer the best line of defense against the coronavirus. Business leaders and industry groups have argued against the rule changes because, they say, companies would shoulder much of the costs. And the efforts are playing out as the Biden administration is pressing immunization rules for private companies and as coronavirus cases are surging again because of the fast-spreading omicron variant. Observers say it’s a mark of the politicization of the coronavirus — with fights flaring over business closures, mask mandates and more — and how it has scrambled state politics and altered long-held positions. It wasn’t long ago, they note, that two dozen Republican-led states moved to restrict unemployment aid to compel residents to return to the workforce and ease labor shortages.

Flight cancellations marred Christmas weekend for many travelers, as COVID-19 left carriers short-staffed to operate busy schedules over the holiday, the Wall Street Journal reported. In the U.S., canceled flights mounted through the weekend and involved many airlines. The disruptions came suddenly as a ramp-up in employee absences caught carriers off guard. The industry for months had been adjusting to labor shortages amid high customer demand, and because of measures such as incentive pay and scaled-back schedules had gotten through Thanksgiving largely without problems. It was over Thanksgiving weekend that the Omicron variant of COVID-19 emerged as a new global public health foe. Its rapid spread pushed the airlines’ staffing limits this weekend, they said. It was unclear Sunday whether the worst of the canceling was over or if there would be more in the days ahead. “Our current pilot COVID-19 case count is on the rise. Pilots who have developed symptoms are also in quarantine and we have a high number of pilots on the sick list,” Bryan Quigley, senior vice president of flight operations at United Airlines Holdings Inc., on Sunday wrote to pilots. He asked them to take precautions. Delta Air Lines Inc., which pointed to the new variant as well as winter weather as problematic, said midday that it had canceled about 161 of the 4,155 flights it had planned to operate Sunday, with around 40 more cancellations forecast for the day, a smaller number than it had initially expected to scrap. Delta canceled 375 flights on Christmas Day and more than 200 on Christmas Eve, the airline said. (Subscription required.)