Rick Karlin is reporting in the Times Union the electronic debit-card system for the federal Supplemental Nutritional Program, also known as food stamps, stopped working for a brief period January 3, preventing people from making purchases. The outage hit several states that use a system provided by the Conduent Inc. electronic benefit program. The system was back up after about an hour, a spokesman for the New York Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance said. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Iowa were also affected by the outage. In New York, SNAP recipients from New York City to Albany were posting about the outages on various social media platforms including Twitter. Read the full story in the Times Union.