QCA.news - Quad Cities news and view from both sides of the river

Monday, June 29th, 2026
	Happy Joe's holds America 250 block parties Restaurants in Davenport and Bettendorf joined in the festivities.
	Planned Parenthood closing Iowa City location In-person services will be moved to Des Moines.
	WQUD Vintage Radio suffers transmission tower troubles Spotty internet at the Geneseo tower keeps interrupting WQUD's broadcast signal.
	Davenport health systems settle with DOJ for more than $4 million The DOJ alleges overuse and thus overbilling for heart pumps between 2016 and 2022.
	Here's what you need to know before heading out to the John Deere Classic this week WQAD is proud to once again be the official station for the tournament, which runs from July 1-5 at TPC Deere Run.
	Davenport awarded community catalyst grant for rehabilitation of historic building The City of Davenport received a $100,000 grant from the State of Iowa to support the redevelopment of Raphael’s Emporium at 628 Harrison Street.
	How to see June's Strawberry Moon The moon reaches peak illumination at 7:56 p.m. ET.
	Hook's Pub & Grill, Clinton, closes permanently after fire According to a Facebook post, a Clinton bar is now closed permanently after a devastating blaze. "We got the word (Monday) that Hook's Pub & Grill is a total loss, so it's with heavy hearts, we announce the passing of Hook's Pub & Grill," the post says. "Hooks' wasn't just a neighborhood bar - it [...]
	Colona baby pantry offers support to parents As the cost of raising a child continues to climb, one local church is helping families save money on baby essentials.
	Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui gets 30 years in U.S. prison for fraud conviction Guo said he came to the U.S. to destroy the Chinese Communist Party. But the judge said he instead diverted investor money to live lavishly.
	Arconic eagle nest collapse leaves community concerned, experts optimistic After Arconic's eagle nest fell on Sunday, wildlife rehabilitators believe the two eaglets likely survived and expect the parent eagles to continue caring for them.
	MercyOne Genesis offers heat safety tips Summer heat safety recommendations from MercyOne Genesis Convenient Care.
	3-vehicle crash at Main and McKinley closes road in Keokuk; 2 hospitalized Main Street is closed from McKinley Avenue to Belknap Boulevard.
	Extreme Heat Warning until WED 10:00 PM CDT Extreme Heat Warning in Effect Until 10 PM CDT Wednesday
	Open since 1988, Davenport Golden Corral to close After nearly 30 years in operation, the Golden Corral in Davenport is closing its doors. The location's last day will be July 6. Our Quad Cities News reached out to the general manager, who wouldn't give a reason for the closing. The buffet restaurant first opened in 1988, offering all-you-can-eat fare for a flat rate. [...]
	Jordan Spieth returns to Deere Run for John Deere Classic Tuesday night, KWQC will be airing an hour long show on KWQC + called Countdown to the Classic at 6:30 p.m.
	Experts share tips to stay safe as Quad Cities heat climbs With temperatures climbing into the 90s this week, experts share how to stay safe, from hydrating early to keeping your home cool.
	New life for piece of Davenport history? A piece of Davenport history is getting a new chance at life. The City of Davenport was awarded a $100,000 state grant to help revive Raphael’s Emporium at at 628 Harrison St. The building dates back to the late-1800s. It has been a tin shop, rag warehouse and a cigar manufacturing site. The building has [...]
	55 to 60: speed limit changes come Wednesday in Iowa Drivers will see a change in the speed limit from the traditional 55 miles per hour to 60 miles per hour on some two-lane paved highways.
	Michigan governor threatens to pull troops from D.C. if used for Trump task force Michigan Gov. Whitmer is one of four Democrats who sent their states' National Guard troops to Washington, D.C. ahead of America 250 celebrations in recent weeks, amid President Trump's ongoing — and controversial — deployment in the city.
	New DUI-related resource opens in East Moline There are over 21,000 DUI arrests in Illinois every year, and a new resource opened in the QCA to help people navigate DUI-related requirements and recovery services. Elevated Treatment and Recovery Solutions dedicated its new location at 918 15th Ave., East Moline. The company provides DUI evaluations and driver-risk evaluation services. In Illinois, anyone arrested [...]
	Arconic Eagle Cam nest falls with eaglets inside Liberty, a mother bald eagle feature in front of hundreds of millions of viewers on the Arconic Eagle Cam, lost her home June 28. The nest dropped out of the tree with her two eaglets, Artemis and Apollo, sitting inside. They are just old enough to start using their wings and were able to glide [...]
	Golden Corral Buffet & Grill in Davenport to close The Golden Corral Buffet & Grill in Davenport is set to close next week.
	Heat wave underway in the Quad Cities We have been watching the weather for the past few days as temperatures have heated up over the weekend for the heat wave this week. Temperatures will be maintaining the 90s for most of the week with feels like temperatures well in the triple digits for the next few days. It is no surprise that [...]
	Foster care provider urges Iowans to consider fostering amid statewide need The state is facing a critical shortage of licensed foster parents, with only 650 licensed homes in Iowa to roughly 1,500 kids needing placement in those homes.
	Foster care provider says Scott County faces critical need for more foster homes Right now there are about 1,500 children in licensed foster care homes in Iowa, but only 650 licensed foster parents. More parents are needed in all 99 counties.
	Scott County releases names of adults injured in I-80 crash, 1-year-old still in hospital A 1-year-old who was injured in a rollover crash on Interstate 80 over the weekend continues to be treated at the University of Iowa, according to the Sheriff's Office.
	More foster parents are needed across Iowa The Iowa Data Center showed around 6,000 children in foster care in Iowa as of 2024. Children are waiting for placement in all 99 counties.
	Flight sets speed record from Australia to Moline The flight reached Moline from Melbourne in just 16 hours and 54 minutes.
	Niabi Zoo reveal genders of 3 new Pallas's cats All three of the new arrivals are boys.
	Moline man sentenced to 15 years for drug charges A Moline man was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for drug charges. According to public court documents, Donell Hines, 37, distributed approximately three-and-a-half ounces of crack cocaine between March and April 2025. At Hines’ home, law enforcement found distribution quantities of fentanyl, crack cocaine and marijuana. Lab testing showed that some of the [...]
	What is the state of Iowa's foster care system right now? Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a new law that changes how foster care parents are trained. The goal is to reduce barriers and increase the foster parent pool.
	Stay safe from severe heat: Here's how from QC doctor The forecast for the week leading into the July 4 holiday and the John Deere Classic calls for an extended stretch of hot and humid weather. In a news release, MercyOne Genesis Medical Center has tips to protect yourself from the dangers of heat exhaustion. MercyOne Genesis Medical Center Emergency Medicine Medical Director Michael Craddick, [...]
	2 westbound lanes between 7th and 16th Streets closed The lane closures are expected to remain in place through Wednesday, July 1.
	Officials release names and conditions of those involved in weekend I-80 vehicle rollover crash A 31-year-old female and a 23 month-old female infant are both in the hospital after a single vehicle rollover near Walcott Saturday afternoon.
	Locks and Dam 15 Auxiliary Lock to open for holiday weekend Some good news for boaters planning to go out on the Mississippi River over the 4th of July weekend.
	Davenport Community School District names new administrators for 2026-27 year The Davenport Community School District has named new administrators for the 2026–2027 school year effective July 1, a news release says. "Strong leadership is essential to creating exceptional learning experiences for our students," said Superintendent TJ Schneckloth. "Each of these administrators has demonstrated a deep commitment to educational excellence, collaboration, and student achievement. We are [...]
	Crews respond to multi-vehicle crash near Quad Cities Airport Crews are on the scene of a multi-vehicle crash in Moline.
	The Temporary Protected Status program may effectively be over. Here's what we know. A Supreme Court ruling gives the Trump administration space to strip this status from hundreds of thousands of more people from the few remaining countries with this program.
	KWQC + to stream Red, White & Boom The show is expected to start around 9:30 p.m.
	4 chinchillas dead, 3 kittens and 1 cat rescued after Burlington house fire The Burlington Fire Department responded to a house fire on the 1200 block of Smith Street where crews found four chinchillas dead due to smoke.
	Venezuela's deadly quakes put its U.S.-backed government to the test Venezuela's La Guaira state bore the brunt of the earthquake damage, bringing memories of a 1999 disaster that became President Hugo Chávez's first major test. Now, it's the acting leader's challenge.
	Davenport receives $100,000 grant to help redevelop Raphael's Emporium Davenport is supporting a developer's efforts to restore a historic, vacant building on Harrison Street that dates back to the 1800s and once housed a cigar manufacturer.
	10 most expensive states to buy rental property in 2026 10 most expensive states to buy rental property in 2026As housing prices soar, homebuying has become harder across the country. Naturally, some places are hit harder than others. The gap between the least and most expensive states to buy rental property has widened substantially, and it’s impacting how and whether people can afford real estate.There are a few different reasons for the discrepancy, ranging from limited housing supply to restrictive zoning laws. Sudden jumps in job and population growth, along with geographic constraints, can also limit purchase opportunities and widen the gap between renting and buying costs.By understanding broader rental and housing market trends, landlords and investors can determine where to buy their next rental investment property. To help paint a picture of how expensive today’s top markets have become, TurboTenant counts down the 10 most expensive states to buy real estate, but not before a look at a short list of what drives up prices.Why are some states more expensive than others?Numerous factors are to blame for the housing affordability crisis. And though the exact reasons may vary, considering the following variables will give you a better idea of why home prices are particularly high in a given location:Strong job markets: Places with strong job markets tend to draw high-earning professionals from surrounding states and countries, thus creating intense competition for a limited pool of available homes. When demand outpaces supply, bidding wars become common, and prices climb quickly.High population density: More people living in one area means fewer homes available. In densely populated states, even modest properties can command premium prices due to limited supply.Limited available land: Without room to expand due to geographic constraints such as coastlines, mountain ranges, or islands, developers can’t build more property. When the land runs out, prices have nowhere to go but up.Slow new construction: Permitting laws, zoning restrictions, community opposition, labor shortages, and weather can all slow the construction of new homes. Even in areas where demand is surging, the flow of new supply often can’t keep pace, putting sustained upward pressure on prices.10 most expensive states to buy rental property in 2026Now that you have an idea of the reasons behind high housing costs, here is a look at the priciest places in the U.S. We sourced the numbers below from each state’s Zillow Home Value Index, which measures typical mid-tier home values nationwide.#10: Oregon – $502,934A strong tech sector and creative economy in the Portland metro area have pushed the state’s housing market well above the national average. Statewide, home values have grown by roughly 40% since 2019, though eastern Oregon and the southern coast are significantly cheaper than Portland and its surrounding suburbs.Real estate investors may want to steer clear of the Beaver State, though, as Oregon has some of the nation’s strictest rent control laws and even requires landlords to pay tenants’ relocation fees if they increase rent significantly. Ultimately, the price-to-rent ratio isn’t ideal, even for higher-cash-flow Airbnb investments.Source: ZHVI data through May 31, 2026#9: New Hampshire – $516,578Since 2019, New Hampshire’s housing market has been completely transformed. Home values are up by nearly 80%, driven by remote workers and homebuyers who can’t afford Boston or the greater New England area. With all that competition swirling, homes regularly sell above asking price.Though median home values recently surpassed $500,000 (and can be much higher in coastal communities like Rye and Portsmouth), you can still find cheaper property in towns like Berlin and Claremont. New Hampshire also has relatively landlord-friendly laws for rental property investments.Source: ZHVI data through May 31, 2026#8: New York – $517,805The New York City metro area is famous for its astronomical housing prices, which have driven up average costs across the state. In affordable upstate cities like Rochester and Buffalo, median home prices hover around $200,000. However, by state, home prices are up about 5% year over year.On top of its high housing prices, New York consistently ranks among the least landlord-friendly states due to rent stabilization laws in the Big Apple, just-cause eviction requirements, and a tenant-favorable court system. Most prospective landlords might want to look elsewhere for their next real estate investment.Source: ZHVI data through May 31, 2026#7: Utah – $541,277Utah typically isn’t the first state to come to mind for high housing prices. But an expanding tech sector and in-migration from neighboring states have driven up home prices, particularly in the Salt Lake City-Provo corridor. Costs in resort markets, like Park City, are even higher.On the upside, Utah’s rental laws are relatively landlord-friendly. If you buy in the right place at the right time, long-term rental demand from the state’s growing population should translate to a decent profit margin. But short-term rental owners may face headwinds in resort areas as regulations increase.Source: ZHVI data through May 31, 2026#6: Colorado – $543,270Colorado has long been desirable for homebuying, with metros like Denver, Boulder, and Colorado Springs all drawing buyers who are willing to pay a premium for an outdoorsy lifestyle. Though home prices have dipped by 2.4% year-over-year, values remain well above the nationwide averages for housing costs by state.Though $543,000 won’t go far in larger cities, towns like Pueblo and Grand Junction offer lower-cost investment opportunities. Not to mention, Colorado also ranks on TurboTenant’s list of the most landlord-friendly states and has one of the lowest property tax rates in the country at roughly 0.50%.Source: ZHVI data through May 31, 2026#5: New Jersey – $578,855The rise of remote work and proximity to New York City have contributed to New Jersey having one of the highest home prices among states. Costs are highest in Bergen County, near NYC, but South Jersey still has some affordable markets worth looking into.Landlords won’t have an easy time in New Jersey, however, as the state has the nation’s highest property taxes and just-cause eviction laws that extend tenant protections. With these limitations in mind, New Jersey isn’t the best place for real estate investing, even in that state’s more affordable markets.Source: ZHVI data through May 31, 2026#4: Washington – $603,870Washington’s housing demand is primarily concentrated in the Seattle metro, which is home to major corporate employers like Amazon, Starbucks, and Microsoft. Though home prices have dipped slightly, falling roughly 0.5% year-over-year, Washington remains within the top five most expensive states to buy rental property in 2026.Seattle, of course, has the most costly homes, with average values hovering around $870,000. While other cities like Spokane and Yakima have more affordable houses, landlords will have to contend with the state’s just-cause lease termination requirements, rent increase restrictions, and lengthy eviction timelines.Source: ZHVI data through May 31, 2026#3: Massachusetts – $667,265Massachusetts has one of the highest average housing prices among states because of its elite universities, a highly concentrated job market, and severely limited housing supply. Costs are particularly high in Boston and Cape Cod, though the burgeoning Pioneer Valley area offers a more affordable alternative.Landlords should also note that Massachusetts law tends to favor tenants. The state requires landlords to pay annual interest on security deposits and gives tenants the right to seal their eviction records, limiting what future landlords can see. Investors here also face high entry costs, thin margins, and increasingly complex landlord-tenant laws, making rental property operations difficult at best.Source: ZHVI data through May 31, 2026#2: California – $775,550California has long been the second-most expensive state to buy rental property, primarily due to high housing prices in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles. Though the cheaper Central Valley and Inland Empire bring down average costs, homeownership rates are just 55% as of 2025.With a large renter population, California is one of the least landlord-friendly states in the country due to its strict rent control laws, high income taxes, and variations in local landlord-tenant laws. The state also heavily regulates short-term rentals, making Airbnb equally unfeasible.Source: ZHVI data through May 31, 2026#1: Hawai'i – $831,183With a gap of over $50,000 between Hawai‘i and California housing prices, the Aloha State ranks as the most expensive state to buy an investment property by a wide margin. Homes cost more than twice the U.S. average due to extreme geographical constraints, tourism demand, and high construction costs.Compared to other islands, costs are particularly high in densely populated Oahu, where the median sales price exceeds $1.1 million. Hawai‘i’s short-term rental market is also under fire from local lawmakers, who are already phasing out short-term rentals on Maui to create housing opportunities for residents.Statewide, long-term rental demand is strong, driven by a large rental base. But the combination of high entry prices and rising operating costs means that investors who haven’t done thorough market research can easily lose money on rental properties in Hawaii.Source: ZHVI data through May 31, 2026What high home prices mean for buyers and landlordsThe spread between the cheapest and most expensive states is pushing a growing number of would-be investors out of the markets they’d most like to enter. In the states on this list, prices have climbed so high that a growing number of residents with solid incomes can’t afford to buy.That doesn’t mean investment opportunities don’t exist.If you’re researching where to buy rental property, price is only part of the equation. A state’s landlord-tenant laws, property tax rates, and eviction timelines can make or break a deal in ways that raw home values don’t capture. A market with high prices and landlord-friendly laws can still outperform a cheaper state with restrictive tenant protections.Before committing to a market, learn how real estate investing works and stress-test the math with a rental property calculator. The numbers will tell you whether a high-priced state is worth the cost of admission.This story was produced by TurboTenant and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Why car crashes are an overlooked threat during pregnancy Why car crashes are an overlooked threat during pregnancyExpectant parents often ask their doctors about air travel, hot tubs, and which foods to avoid. They rarely ask about the activity they do almost every day. Driving and riding in a car turns out to be one of the larger physical risks a pregnancy faces, and the research suggests the danger does not behave the way most people would guess.In the United States, motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of trauma-related fetal death. One large study put the odds of a serious crash at roughly 1 in 50 over the course of a pregnancy. Below, Davis, Saperstein & Salomon, P.C. looks at how often these crashes happen, when the risk appears to peak, and what the medical evidence says about lowering it.How often crashes happen during pregnancyA 2011 review in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine by epidemiologists Catherine Vladutiu and Harold Weiss estimated that about 92,500 pregnant women are injured in motor vehicle crashes each year in the United States. The same review described crashes as the leading cause of traumatic fetal death and a top cause of injury-related hospitalization among pregnant women. State-level studies it cited found crash rates among pregnant drivers ranging from roughly 1% to nearly 3%, depending on the state and the years measured.Measuring the toll on the pregnancies themselves is harder, in part because fetal death certificates do not record whether the mother had recently been in a crash. The best current synthesis comes from a 2020 systematic review in BMJ Open, which pooled 19 studies covering more than 3.2 million women. Among women involved in a crash during pregnancy, it found fetal death or stillbirth in about 6.6 per 1,000 and maternal death in about 3.6 per 1,000. The authors cautioned that the underlying studies varied widely, which is part of why a precise national count of crash-related fetal losses remains out of reach.The risk peaks in the middle of pregnancy, not the endThe clearest evidence on crash risk comes from a 2014 study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. A team led by Dr. Donald Redelmeier followed 507,262 women who gave birth in Ontario between 2006 and 2011, comparing each woman against her own record, her crash rate before pregnancy versus during it. Measuring each woman against herself strips out the personal driving habits that complicate most comparisons.In the three years before pregnancy, these women averaged 177 serious crashes a month as drivers. During the second trimester, the figure climbed to 252 a month. That works out to a 42% jump, with a confidence interval of 32% to 53%. The pattern held regardless of the women's age, income, or education, and across all four seasons.Two details make the finding more persuasive. The increase showed up only when the women were driving, not when they rode as passengers or walked as pedestrians, which points to something about being behind the wheel rather than simply spending more time near traffic. And the elevated risk faded in the third trimester, then dropped below baseline in the year after birth. Redelmeier and his colleagues pointed to the fatigue, insomnia, nausea, and distraction common in mid-pregnancy, which arrive once the careful early months have passed, as a plausible explanation.What a crash can do to a pregnancyMost pregnant patients admitted to a hospital after a crash have relatively minor injuries, and the baby's outcome usually follows the mother's: When she does well, the baby tends to as well. The serious exceptions, though, can follow even a modest impact. The complications clinicians watch for most closely are:Placental abruption, in which the placenta tears away from the uterine wall. It is the most common cause of crash-related fetal death, and reported rates run from about 1% to 5% in minor crashes to as high as 20% to 50% in severe ones.Uterine rupture, which is rare but carries a fetal mortality rate near 100% when it does happen.Maternal shock, when heavy blood loss causes the body to divert blood to vital organs and away from the fetus.Direct fetal trauma, usually to the head, although the uterus and abdominal wall give the fetus considerable protection.The same body of evidence points to a range of specific risks: crashes during pregnancy are linked to higher rates of preterm birth, placental abruption, and fetal loss, and even a minor impact can matter. That is why obstetricians urge an evaluation after any crash, including low-speed ones and cases where the mother feels fine.What the evidence says about driving more safelyOne point in the research gets muddled often enough to be worth stating plainly: Seat belts and airbags protect pregnant occupants. Restraints can contribute to injury in a high-speed crash, but going unbelted is far more dangerous. Standard guidance is to run the lap belt low, under the belly and across the hips and pelvic bone, keep the shoulder strap between the breasts, and leave about 10 inches between the breastbone and the steering wheel where the seat allows.The Ontario researchers were careful to say their findings were not a reason to stop driving. As Redelmeier put it at the time, the message was to drive more carefully, particularly in the months when the data suggests attention tends to slip.After a crash: medical and legal follow-upSome fetal injuries cause no symptoms the mother can feel, so doctors generally recommend a medical check after any crash during pregnancy, then watching for warning signs such as abdominal pain, vaginal bleeding, contractions, or a change in the baby's movement. Pediatricians also suggest noting a prenatal crash in a child's records, because some effects of fetal head trauma, including developmental or intellectual delays, may not appear until later in childhood.The legal picture depends on the state. New Jersey is one example worth noting: The state's Limitation on Lawsuit Threshold, sometimes called the verbal threshold, limits certain claims for injuries that are not permanent, but state law treats the loss of a fetus as a permanent injury, which preserves the right to file. Filing deadlines and the long delay before some developmental injuries surface are among the reasons these cases can grow complicated.MethodologyThis article draws on peer-reviewed research and public health data rather than any original survey. The central figure on crash risk comes from Redelmeier, May, Thiruchelvam, and Barrett, “Pregnancy and the risk of a traffic crash,” a population-based, self-matched cohort study of 507,262 women who gave birth in Ontario between April 1, 2006, and March 31, 2011. The study counted only crashes serious enough to require emergency care and compared each woman's pre-pregnancy rate against her second-trimester rate; the 42% increase carries a 95% confidence interval of 32% to 53% (p < 0.001). Because the cohort included only women who went on to give birth, it leaves out crashes that ended a pregnancy and so likely understates the true risk. The study population is Canadian; the underlying physiology and driving conditions are broadly comparable to those in the U.S., but readers should keep the national source in mind.U.S. incidence figures (roughly 92,500 injured pregnant women per year, plus the state-level crash rates) come from Vladutiu and Weiss, “Motor vehicle safety during pregnancy.” The fetal and maternal mortality rates following crashes during pregnancy — about 6.6 fetal deaths or stillbirths and 3.6 maternal deaths per 1,000 — are pooled estimates from the systematic review by Amezcua-Prieto and colleagues. which combined 19 studies covering more than 3.2 million women, the large majority in high-income countries. Those pooled rates carry wide confidence intervals and high statistical heterogeneity, which is why the article presents them as approximate rather than precise counts. Injury complications and their rate ranges are also drawn from that review. Percentages for placental abruption and similar complications reflect ranges reported across the clinical literature, not a single dataset.This story was produced by Davis, Saperstein & Salomon, P.C. and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Extreme Heat Warning until WED 10:00 PM CDT Extreme Heat Warning in Effect Until 10 PM CDT Wednesday
	Golden Corral Buffet & Grill to close Davenport location A popular Davenport restaurant will close their doors next week.
	Davenport Schools hires four principals West High School, Sudlow Middle School and McKinley Elementary School will all have new principals next school year.
	Enjoy July 4 events around the QCA Cities around the QCA are getting ready to celebrate the July 4 holiday. The list below contains information about celebrations around the area. Illinois: East Moline: East Moline Independence Day, July 3, fireworks at Rock Island County Fairgrounds at dusk, kids zone 6:15 – 8:15 p.m., live music 6:45 – 9:10 p.m. July 4, pancake [...]
	Is it back-to-school butterflies or something deeper? Is it back-to-school butterflies or something deeper?Back-to-school season can be a stressful time for students. As you think about navigating your class schedule, friend dynamics, academic pressures, and other responsibilities, it’s normal to feel a little nervous. If this happens to you, you’re not alone, and there are ways to feel better.Feeling anxious at the start of a new school year doesn’t mean you have a mental health condition. But if your anxiety doesn’t go away and negatively impacts your daily life, it could be cause for concern. Around 30% of teens will experience an anxiety disorder at some point.Rula explains how to spot the difference between back-to-school butterflies and an anxiety disorder so you know when to ask for help.Key TakeawaysIt’s OK to feel nervous during back-to-school season. Often, these worries will subside once you get back to class.Getting into a routine, connecting with friends, and learning some stress-management skills can help reduce back-to-school anxiety.If your anxiety is so intense that it’s making daily life difficult, talk to an adult you trust. They can help connect you with the support you need to feel better.Common experiences with back-to-school anxietyWhen summer vacation comes to an end, you might feel a little nervous about going back to school. You might wonder if you’ll like your teachers, who you’ll sit with at lunch, or if you’ll have any classes with friends. These worries aren’t unusual, and they’ll probably go away once you settle into your new routine.However, for some students, back-to-school anxiety can be more intense, and they may need some help to manage it. If you’re experiencing any of the following, reach out to an adult you trust.Sleep troubles: “Ever since I started thinking about the first day of school, I haven’t been sleeping very much. When I do fall asleep, I have nightmares about being in class.”Appetite changes: “No food sounds good to me anymore, not even my favorite things. I feel like throwing up whenever I think about going back to school.”Aches and fatigue: “For some reason, I keep having headaches, and I’m exhausted all the time. My dad took me to the doctor, but they couldn’t find anything physically wrong with me.”Avoidance: “When I saw the back-to-school-night invitation in the mail, I threw it in the trash. The last thing I want to do is go anywhere near school before I absolutely have to.”Reassurance-seeking: “Every day, I ask my parents to call the school office for a copy of my new schedule. They keep saying it’s not ready yet, but I need to figure out which teachers I have.”What’s behind your fear of going back to school?Some of the most common reasons you might be experiencing back-to-school anxiety include:Academic pressure: Many high-achieving students experience intense pressure to maintain their grades. This can lead to burnout. Once summer break comes to an end, you may worry about facing that pressure again.Bullying: If you’ve been the victim of bullying, you may worry about what the new school year may bring. It might make you anxious to anticipate encountering a bully on the bus, in the hallways, or in class.Mental health concerns: Severe back-to-school anxiety that doesn’t improve once the school year starts could be a sign of an anxiety disorder or another underlying mental health concern.School safety: School shootings are a public health crisis in the U.S., and gun violence is the leading cause of death for children and teens. Fearing for your safety at school could increase your anxiety.If you’re experiencing anxiety related to the start of the school year, support is available. Reaching out to others — whether a parent, school counselor, or friend — can help you feel better.Seven ways students can face back-to-school anxietyYou don’t have to let your back-to-school stress take over your mind. You can regain your calm and confidence as you enter the school year.Consider these tips:Get back into a regular routine. Before the school year begins, start going to bed at the same time and getting up early. This will help your mind and body adjust to the new schedule once classes start.Connect with friends. If you haven’t seen your friends all summer, reach out to see if they want to get together before school starts. Spending time with friends can help you feel less alone at the start of a new school year.Take a school tour. You might not want to spend time in a school building during summer, and that’s OK! But taking a tour before school starts can help you feel less anxious — especially if you’re going to be in a new building this year.Create a list of things to look forward to. Think about the year ahead, and try to come up with a few things that you’re looking forward to. Then, write them down so you can look at them when you’re feeling anxious. Your list could include anything from joining a new club, taking a class that interests you, or getting to see your friends.Talk to your school counselor. If you’re still feeling anxious once school starts, your school counselor can help. Their job is to help students manage emotions — including anxiety — so they can make the most of their education. They may offer individual or small-group counseling during the school day.Create an anxiety tool kit. Having a few go-to coping strategies can help you navigate anxiety in the moment. For example, breathing exercises can help you calm your mind and body. And no one will even know you’re doing it!Ask for help. If you’ve tried to manage your anxiety on your own, and it’s not getting any better, talk to an adult you trust. This could be a teacher, coach, or parent. Find a time to connect with them privately, and be honest about how your anxiety is affecting you. Let them know you’d like to explore anxiety treatment. A therapist or psychiatrist can determine whether you have an anxiety disorder and help you create a plan to manage back-to-school anxiety and other worries.Clinician’s take“Back-to-school anxiety is like a smoke alarm — if it only sounds at school, the issue may be in that environment,” says Brandy Chalmers, LPC “But if it keeps ringing everywhere, it may point to a deeper condition.”This story was produced by Rula and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	4 reasons the mall is Gen Z’s favorite place to hang out 4 reasons the mall is Gen Z’s favorite place to hang outFor a generation raised on algorithmic feeds, group chats, and on-demand everything, the most surprising place Gen Z is choosing to spend time together may be the most analog one of all: the shopping mall.A nationally representative study conducted in March 2026 by Sunnie, Hello Sunshine’s Gen Z-focused media and lifestyle brand, in partnership with Westfield Rise, finds that 73% of Gen Z respondents say the mall is the top place they go to spend time with friends, outranking parks, restaurants, and even each other’s homes.The numbers land alongside a broader wave of industry data pointing in the same direction. Projections from research firm Circana show that by 2030, Gen Z and Millennials will dominate the U.S. population and drive 60% of retail sales growth. NielsenIQ projects Gen Z retail spending will surpass $12 trillion globally by 2030, with growth outpacing every other generation.Here are four reasons the mall has become Gen Z’s favorite place to hang out and what it signals about a generation choosing physical spaces over digital ones. Courtesy of Westfield Rise 1. They’re looking for connection beyond the screenThe shift toward in-person gathering comes amid a well-documented rise in social isolation among young people. In 2023, the U.S. surgeon general declared loneliness a public health epidemic. A 2025 Cigna survey found that 67% of Gen Z adults reported feeling lonely, which is the highest proportion of any generation.For a generation that came of age during remote schooling, algorithmic media, and pandemic-era isolation, the appeal of physical gathering spaces is not nostalgic but instead practical. According to Sunnie and Westfield’s research, 72% of respondents said they would still visit the mall even if they could not buy anything, suggesting that the draw is less about consumption than about shared experience. Rather than structured activities or ticketed events, many respondents described valuing spaces where they could stay for hours, move freely between environments, and spend time together without pressure to plan or spend.Sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined the term “third space” in 1989 to describe locations beyond home and work, such as cafés, barbershops, and bookstores that foster informal social interaction. For decades, malls performed that role for American teenagers. As screens have become the default setting for nearly every aspect of daily life, Gen Z appears to be actively seeking out the in-person moments that digital environments cannot replicate. Courtesy of Westfield Rise 2. The mall beats social for brand discoveryIn an era defined by social media-driven discovery, research has surfaced a counterintuitive pattern. A majority of consumers (70%) are more likely to discover new brands in malls, according to Westfield’s How We Shop: The Next Decade study, a global retail trends report examining how consumers find and engage with brands, versus social media platforms. According to that same research, 59% say physical retail inspires them more than online.In effect, the mall is functioning as an offline group chat where decisions aren’t shaped by algorithms, but by the people you’re with. Visitors arrive without a strict agenda and make choices based on atmosphere, curiosity, and social cues. Research on sensory marketing shows that physical environments drive higher rates of unplanned purchasing than digital-only touchpoints, in part because they activate emotional and social responses that screens cannot replicate. Quad/Graphics and The Harris Poll released a cross-generational study last year detailing widespread consumer desire for more in-real-life brand experiences. The report, The Return of Touch, shows consumer values rebalancing toward physical, tangible connections and the benefits to brands. Nearly all of Gen Z and millennials (86%) said “touching and feeling products are essential to my purchase decisions.” Courtesy of Westfield Rise 3. Retailers are designing spaces for hanging out, not just shoppingAs Gen Z’s preferences shift, so does the physical environment they’re walking into. Across the country, retailers are rethinking what their spaces need to do and increasingly, the answer is to keep people there longer, not just move them through a transaction.Pacsun, a youth-focused apparel retailer, is opening 35 new locations over three years, its first major expansion in nearly two decades. But the strategy is not simply about adding square footage. CEO Brie Olson told The Wall Street Journal that the decision reflects renewed interest from Gen Z shoppers in mall environments as social destinations.Lululemon’s 17,000-square-foot SoHo flagship in Manhattan, which opened in late 2025, is designed around community programming — free fitness classes, local ambassador boards, and product personalization areas. The company has said it plans to adapt additional locations using that model. The common thread is clear: For these retailers, the metric appears to be shifting from transactions per square foot to time spent and experiences created.Disney transformed the mall atrium into a runway-style experience for the premiere of “Devil Wears Prada 2” and extended the glam beyond the event itself. “Fashion Emergency” vending kiosks popped up at select theaters nationwide, offering complimentary beauty and styling products like makeup and hairspray, to help moviegoers elevate their night out. Courtesy of Westfield Rise 4. Brands are turning malls into stages for culture, not just commerceExperiential formats are extending beyond apparel. Beauty and entertainment brands have increasingly used temporary, participation-focused installations to translate online culture into physical interaction.At Westfield Century City in Los Angeles, skincare brand Josie Maran hosted a sensory-driven sampling experience that drew thousands of visitors over a weekend. Pinterest and NYX Professional Makeup collaborated on an in-person pop-up inspired by trending digital aesthetics, designed to encourage experimenting and sharing in real time.Entertainment companies have made similar moves. Apple TV hosted an immersive public installation tied to its programming that encouraged visitors to co-create custom merchandise, drawing more than 20,000 participants over two weekends. Music artist Billie Eilish’s multi-day pop-up ahead of film screenings drew fans less for merchandise than for the opportunity to take part in a live, shared cultural moment.Clearly, participation now matters more than observation. That preference is reflected in the research findings, with 87% of respondents saying they want brands to involve them in the creative process, according to Hello Sunshine and Westfield Rise’s report. A 2024 global survey from Interpublic’s Momentum Worldwide shows 83% of consumers expressed a higher appreciation for brands that promote genuine connections with communities, and 75% feel a sense of belonging by connecting with fellow fans of the same brand. Courtesy of Westfield Rise The investment is following the foot trafficBroader marketing trends suggest the industry is taking notice. Experiential and sponsorship spending saw the largest budget increase of any offline channel between 2024 and 2025, growing by more than 7% according to Winterberry Group. In 2026, the Interactive Advertising Bureau reported that 41% of U.S. ad buyers expected to increase their focus on in-person and experiential marketing that year.The growth is not evenly distributed. Reporting from PYMNTS shows that top-tier malls in higher-income areas continue to outperform lower-quality centers, suggesting that foot traffic alone isn’t enough. Destinations that succeed tend to offer a mix of social, cultural, and experiential elements that reward time spent, not just transactions.For Gen Z, the draw to shared physical spaces appears to be deliberate rather than nostalgic. The research suggests they are choosing environments that value atmosphere and help foster connection.MethodologyThe Comeback of the Hangout study combined three research methods: in-person mall intercepts with Gen Z women ages 13 to 29 at Westfield Century City in Los Angeles (N=86); a nationally representative survey fielded by YPulse (N=1,500; ages 13 to 39, with results reported for a subset of women ages 13 to 29); and a rapid-response national survey fielded by Suzy (N=940; women ages 18 to 29). Data was collected in December 2025 and March 2026.This story was produced by Westfield Rise and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Senate Ethics Committee dismisses complaint against Sen. Ruben Gallego The committee had been alerted by a fellow member of Congress of allegations of campaign finance violations and potential sexual misconduct, but said it found no evidence of wrongdoing.
	Drivers still hitting the road for July 4 travel: AAA Millions of travelers are hitting the roads for the July 4 weekend and there’s good news at the gas pumps for them as prices continue to fall. Molly Hart, spokesperson for AAA Auto Club, spoke with Our Quad Cities News via Zoom to offer tips on making those road trips easier. “I do have to [...]
	How much should you spend on bras? How much should you spend on bras?You've done the math before, even if it wasn't conscious. You bought a $35 bra that felt fine in the fitting room, wore it three times a week, and watched it fall apart in six months. The underwire poked through. The band stretched out. The cups went flat. So you replaced it with another $35 bra and started the cycle again.Here's the truth: How much you should spend on a bra depends less on hitting a specific number and more on understanding what your money is actually buying. A higher price only makes sense when it reflects better materials, more durable construction, and engineering that holds up over time. Plenty of expensive bras don't meet that standard. Some midrange bras punch above their weight. And cheap bras aren't always the wrong call.This guide from Honeylove breaks down what each price tier delivers, why most bras fail prematurely, what hidden construction details separate a bra that earns its price from one coasting on markup, and how to think about the real cost of what you wear every day.What budget, mid-range, and premium price points buy youNot all price tiers are created equal, and not every jump in price reflects a jump in quality. Here's what each range typically delivers.Budget bras (under $25) get you basic fabrics, minimal internal structure, and a limited size range. They'll work for light-wear days or situations where longevity isn't the priority. But the materials and construction at this level have a short functional lifespan. Expect the fit to degrade within a few months of regular rotation.Midrange bras ($25 to $60) offer better fabric blends, some internal shaping or light boning, and wider size availability. This is where most women may have been shopping by default. It's also the tier where the gap between price and actual construction quality is widest and most inconsistent. Some midrange bras are genuinely well-built. Others are budget bras with better packaging.Premium bras ($60 and up) should reflect engineered support systems, high-performance fabrics that maintain recovery and shape, durable edge finishing, and hardware designed for long-term fit adjustment. The key word is "should." A premium price tag alone doesn't guarantee any of that. What it should guarantee is that the brand can tell you exactly why the bra costs what it does, with specifics about materials, construction, and fit engineering.Why most bras fail before they shouldThe most common bra frustrations aren't random bad luck. Each one traces back to a specific construction decision. Understanding that connection is the first step toward knowing what's worth paying for.Underwires that poke throughTraditional underwire bras rely on metal or plastic wires seated inside fabric channels. With repeated use and washing, those channels wear through. The wire migrates, the casing thins, and eventually the wire punctures the fabric.This failure is a construction limitation, not a wear-and-tear inevitability. Alternative support structures exist that eliminate the wire entirely without sacrificing lift.Bonded cradle technology is one example. Instead of a wire floating inside a channel, a structural lift system is bonded directly into the bra. It provides shaping and support without a component that can degrade, poke, or shift over time.Another example is embedded underwire, where the wire is cushioned within the pad of the bra. The extra cushion around the flexible wire creates distance between the wire and your skin, which ultimately makes it a more comfortable support choice. This technique is more likely to be found in the premium bra category.Bands that stretch out within monthsThe band provides much of a bra's support, and band longevity depends on the elastic recovery of the fabric. That's its ability to snap back to its original shape after being stretched.Lower-cost fabric blends lose their recovery quickly. The band rides up, shifts throughout the day, and stops doing its job within a few months of regular wear.High-recovery fabrics like Lycra and double-knit constructions are engineered specifically to maintain compression and shape through repeated wear and washing cycles. That directly extends how long the band performs.Cups that lose their shapeCup structure depends on the density and resilience of the foam or fabric layered inside. Thinner, lower-grade foams compress permanently with body heat and pressure. Within months, cups dent and go flat.Higher-quality construction uses denser foams, bonded internal panels, or structured fabric layers that resist compression and hold their molded shape over time. Memory foam cups, for example, bounce back instead of permanently conforming to pressure points.Edges and seams that frayMost bras use stitched hems and overlocked seam edges. These create stress points that unravel with friction and washing, leading to visible fraying and eventual structural failure at the seam.Raw-cut, bonded edges eliminate stitched hems entirely. There are no thread-based seams to break down, which means less friction against skin and significantly longer construction life.What earns the price: The engineering inside a well-built braConstruction that doesn't cut cornersIn order to assess the quality of a bra's construction, look at these factors:How seams are finishedHow layers are bonded versus stitchedWhether internal support panels are integrated or tacked onBonded construction fuses layers together, while traditional stitched construction relies on thread, which creates weak points that fray and separate over time. The performance gap between the two grows with every wash cycle.Raw-cut bonded edges contribute to longevity because there are no seams to catch or stitching to unravel. They also create a smoother look and feel under clothing.Support architecture that actually worksTrue support comes from the band and side panel engineering, not primarily from straps. How a bra distributes weight across the torso determines both comfort and longevity.Well-engineered bras use wider, reinforced side panels and structured bands to distribute support evenly. This reduces strain on any single point and prevents the gradual breakdown that comes from concentrated stress. Wide smoothing wings, for instance, spread the load while also providing back and side smoothing.Adjustable, convertible hardware is another design decision built for long-term use. As your body changes, the fit adapts rather than becoming something you tolerate until the bra gets replaced.The cost-per-wear equation: What a bra really costs youCost-per-wear is a more honest way to evaluate how much you should spend. Divide what you paid by the number of days you wore it, and the math often flips the assumption that cheaper is more economical.Here's a concrete comparison: If a budget bra costs $30, and it has a 4-6 month lifespan, that’s about a 46-cent cost per wear if you are wearing it three times per week. Comparatively, if a premium bra costs $70 but lasts 12-18 months, that’s about a 36-cent cost per wear if worn at the same cadence.The premium option costs more upfront but less per day. And that doesn't account for the comfort difference, or the fact that you're not shopping for replacements every few months.It makes sense to invest more in everyday bras worn in heavy rotation. This is where construction quality directly determines lifespan and daily comfort. If you're wearing it three or more days a week, it needs to hold up.On the other hand, spending less is reasonable for occasion-specific bras worn infrequently. A strapless for one event, a bralette for low-support days. Lower wear frequency means construction longevity matters less.How to tell whether you're paying for quality or just a markupNot every expensive bra is well-built. A higher price tag alone is not proof of better construction. Here's how to tell the difference.Signals that indicate genuine quality:Published fabric composition and sourcing detailsVisible construction techniques (bonded vs. stitched edges, reinforced bands)Transparent information about internal support structuresDetailed size and fit guidance that goes beyond standard S/M/LSpecific explanations of how the bra is engineered and whyRed flags that suggest markup over substance:Vague fabric descriptions ("premium blend" with no specifics)No information about internal constructionHeavy reliance on brand name or aesthetic packaging over product detailLimited or no fit support or sizing resourcesThis story was produced by Honeylove and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	European student housing is 30% more competitive than last year. US students who act now still have the advantage. European student housing is 30% more competitive than last year. US students who act now still have the advantage.Nearly 7.3 million students are studying outside their home countries right now, and about half of them are in Europe, according to UNESCO's first Higher Education Global Trends Report, published in 2026. The same report projects that number to reach nine million by 2030. For U.S. students planning to join them this autumn, the housing market is more competitive than ever, but those who start their search now are still in a position to find great options before the real rush begins.This guide from HousingAnywhere breaks down what the 2026 European student housing market looks like and why acting now puts U.S. students ahead of the curve.Starting early is the single biggest advantage a U.S. student can haveNew data tracking student housing searches across Europe shows bookings rose 30% in May 2026 compared to the previous month, with the number of students actively browsing available homes up approximately 15% over the same period. Of those who booked in May, 44% were already securing housing for an August or September move-in. At other times of the year, only around 10% of students search this far ahead.That gap tells a clear story. Students who begin their search in spring choose from the widest selection of verified, furnished properties before landlords and listings get absorbed by the summer rush. They have time to compare neighborhoods, ask questions, and make a confident decision rather than a pressured one. For U.S. students searching from across the Atlantic without the ability to visit in person, that extra time is not just convenient. It is the difference between finding a home that genuinely fits and settling for whatever is still available.The good news is that students searching now are still ahead of the majority. The peak of the summer rush has not arrived yet, and in most European cities, the strongest selection of listings is still accessible to anyone who moves with purpose in the coming weeks.Where the opportunities are right nowThe sharpest booking increases in May were recorded in the Czech Republic, Slovenia, and the Netherlands, followed by Spain and Hungary, covering cities that consistently rank among the most popular destinations for international students, including Prague, Ljubljana, Amsterdam, Barcelona, and Budapest.In the Netherlands, student housing searches rose 16% month-on-month. Activity was particularly strong in Delft, up 34%, followed by Maastricht at 29%, Utrecht at 28%, Amsterdam at 23%, and The Hague at 19%. The Dutch market is competitive, but students who search now are finding landlords more responsive and options more plentiful than they will be at the height of summer. A 2025 survey of tenants in the Netherlands found that 42% reported their housing search lasted three months or more, which explains why students there have learned to move early.Spain recorded an 18% rise in student searches, with growth spreading well beyond its two biggest cities. Granada was up 45% and Bilbao up 30% alongside Madrid at 26% and Barcelona at 23%, reflecting the growing appeal of Spanish cities that offer strong universities and a high quality of life without the housing pressure of the largest metros.Italy saw a 23% increase in students searching for accommodation, with particularly strong momentum in Turin, up 54%, and Florence, up 45%, with Milan and Rome each up 27%. Students who secure housing in Italian cities early are finding furnished apartments in well-connected neighborhoods that become significantly harder to access once summer competition intensifies.Germany, where most universities begin later in the autumn, offers U.S. students a slightly longer runway. Frankfurt was up 21% and Munich up 20% in May, with broader momentum expected to build through June and July. The search window there remains wider than in markets where the academic year starts in August or early September.What U.S. students searching right now should knowSearching for housing in Europe from the U.S. comes with a unique set of challenges that have nothing to do with budget or qualifications. You cannot do a walkthrough. You cannot build a relationship with a landlord over a coffee. Everything has to work remotely, which means the quality of the platform you search on and the preparation you bring to each inquiry matter enormously.U.S. students who are finding success in European housing searches share a few consistent habits. They have a personalized introduction ready before they start browsing, one that explains who they are, what brings them to the city, and why they would be a reliable tenant. They respond quickly when a listing goes live. They acknowledge up front that they are based in the U.S. and explain clearly how they plan to handle payments, since European landlords are often unfamiliar with U.S. banking and credit history.None of this is complicated. But it requires starting early enough to do it thoughtfully rather than frantically. Students who begin now have exactly that opportunity, and the European cities waiting to welcome them this autumn have more to offer than ever.This story was produced by HousingAnywhere and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Davenport man found guilty of murdering two teens in Moline in 2024 A Rock Island County jury determined Israel Martinez murdered Giovanni Flores and Zachary Meincke in May of 2024.
	How to keep costs under control when attending a wedding this summer How to keep costs under control when attending a wedding this summerSummer is prime time for lovebirds to tie the knot. If you’re invited to a wedding or two, your budget for this year might already be spoken for. As soon as you confirm your RSVP to the invite, it’s easy to get excited about planning for the big day.Weddings can cost a lot. No surprise there. What’s shocking is how much it costs guests to attend. How much? An average of almost $610. If you’re staying local, expect to spend a little less. If you need to hop on a plane to join the fun, your average cost is more than $1,680.Before you max out on your credit cards and set yourself back with debt, Achieve shares five ways you can save on the cost of being a wedding guest.1. Start saving earlyIdeally, as soon as you get the engagement announcement, you should start saving. And definitely when you receive the Save the Date, start stashing cash in your wedding guest fund. Don’t raid your emergency fund, if you have one. Your bestie’s wedding is not an emergency.Here are some expenses you might need to factor in:Wedding attireHotel or vacation home rentalTransportation to and from the weddingWedding giftChildcare, if you'll be away and don't want to bring the kidsPetcareDo your research to figure out how much to shell out for travel-related expenses. Then, automate your savings if possible.Set periodic milestones for your savings goals. That's because if you're traveling, you'll need to book your flights and accommodations early. The wedding gift and your outfit could be purchased later.2. Share expensesIf you have friends and family attending the event, look for someone to share expenses with. Maybe you can carpool and share the cost of gas if the wedding is not local, but close enough to drive to. You can also share a hotel room, or split the cost of a wedding gift.3. Just say "no" to the extrasThose add-on events around a wedding—think the engagement party, bridal shower, and bachelor or bachelorette party, and activities during the wedding weekend—will ramp up the costs to be a wedding guest. If you’re not paying close attention to your budget, you can easily find yourself spending more than you anticipated. Of course you want to support your friends or family in all their celebrations, but don’t do it at the expense of your bank account. So, be okay politely declining festivities if your budget doesn't allow for it.It's perfectly acceptable to opt out or be unavailable. Pick and choose the gatherings that you truly want to be at. Ask yourself, "Do I really want to go? Do I feel like I should go? Can I afford to go?"4. Borrow, rent, and reinvigorate your outfitAsk your friends or put up an ISO (“in search of”) post on your local gift economy group. You'll be surprised at how many folks would be more than happy to give or loan an outfit that’ll fit the bill. Or, consider going the rental or thrifting route. Check out platforms like Rent the Runway, Haverdash, and Nuuly. You can get several items sent to you to choose from, for a fraction of the cost of buying just one. Also, try shopping at your local thrift or consignment store for a wedding day look to save moneyIf you're attending multiple weddings this summer, there's no shame in wearing the same dress or suit at more than one event. An easy way to change it up? Swap out your shoes and accessories, such as jewelry, a hat, wrap, cufflinks or ties to change up the style of your outfit.5. Set a "no travel" ruleIf being a guest at an out-of-town wedding will set you back financially, then don't be afraid to politely decline weddings where you'll need to travel. If it's a destination wedding, there might even be an option to attend virtually.Otherwise, you can send a video message or shoutout on your social feeds the day of. Plus, you can send a wedding gift to show your support. Bonus: Because you aren't going to the wedding, you might have a bit extra to put toward a gift.At the end of the day, adulting means learning how to set your own financial boundaries, especially when life gets expensive. When it comes to budgeting to be a wedding guest this summer, a bit of planning goes a long way. Crunch the numbers and save as far out as possible, and look for deals and find ways to save.This story was produced by Achieve and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	The rise of fin-AI: Why Americans are trusting generative AI with their wallets The rise of fin-AI: Why Americans are trusting generative AI with their walletsGenerative artificial intelligence has quickly become a go-to resource for consumers, from trip planning and meal prepping to dating advice and even money management. Providing users instant access to personalized insights on spending habits, budgeting tips, and even investment strategy, gen AI tools like ChatGPT are taking the role of financial advisor for many. While it’s a simpler, more accessible alternative to working with a finance professional – no appointments, no jargon, and no fear of being judged for asking basic (or deeply personal) money questions – is it actually helping American’s finances?According to new data from Intuit Credit Karma, 66% of Americans surveyed who have used gen AI before say they have used it to seek financial advice, rising to 82% of Gen Z and Millennials. In fact, finance ranks as the second most common use case for gen AI (41%), just behind health and wellness (44%). And it’s not just the occasional one-off question. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of gen AI users say they seek financial guidance from AI often, while 3 in 4 (75%) say they feel it lets them ask the financial questions they’d be too embarrassed to ask anyone else.Gen AI’s most-asked money questionsThose turning to gen AI for financial guidance use it for everything from help with the fundamentals to more complex topics, such as tax filing and investing. Among respondents using gen AI to seek financial advice, the most common topics include financial education and basic personal finance concepts (35%), financial goal setting and action plans (35%), budgeting and expense management (34%), optimizing savings (33%), saving for retirement (31%), and investing in the stock market (32%). AI is proving it can answer a wide range of financial questions consumers face on a daily basis, making it a natural place to turn for financial advice.The results: More confidence, but not without riskAmericans are putting AI-generated financial recommendations into practice, making it clear trust in these tools is growing. In fact, 85% of respondents who have used generative AI for financial advice have acted on the recommendations provided. Among them, 80% say their financial situation has improved thanks to gen AI, and 81% feel more confident managing their finances because of gen AI. Furthermore, when it comes to consumer sentiment around gen AI in general, 79% of users find the information generated to be accurate and 71% consider it helpful.But it’s not all without risk. Of those who have acted on financial advice they received from generative AI, 52% say they have made a poor financial decision or mistake based on the information they received.Many gen AI users are treating it as a starting point when it comes to decision-making, as 80% of those who have acted on financial advice they received from gen AI say they still research and validate the advice before taking action.Why some prefer gen AI for money mattersEven with the rapid rise of generative AI as a helpful resource for almost anything, Americans still turn to a mix of online platforms and tools for financial guidance. Among the 51% of Americans who seek financial advice or information online, 27% consider social media the most useful source, followed by Google or other search engines (20%), with gen AI tools like ChatGPT or Gemini close behind (18%). This could be because 51% say their top concern about using gen AI for financial advice/information is security and privacy.However, many consumers still see clear advantages in generative AI. Of those who have used gen AI for financial advice, nearly half (48%) say it’s faster and more direct than social media, 45% say it explains financial concepts more clearly or in simpler terms, and 44% believe it delivers more personalized advice based on the individual’s specific situation.“Gen AI is a powerful tool for learning, planning, and managing your money in more personalized ways,” said Courtney Alev, consumer financial advocate at Intuit Credit Karma. “It can do more than just explain concepts, it can help consumers take action based on their unique financial goals and current situation. While these tools put smart insights at your fingertips, it’s also important to understand your options and how they fit into your bigger financial picture. Finances are nuanced and deeply personal, so if you’re ever unsure, it never hurts to get a second opinion.”MethodologyThis survey was conducted online within the United States by Intuit Credit Karma Aug. 7-14, 2025, among 1,019 adults ages 18 and older.This story was produced by Intuit Credit Karma and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	MidAmerican Energy ready for heat wave Temperatures are skyrocketing and QCA residents are leaning on their fans and air conditioners to keep cool but may be concerned about higher utility bills. Geoff Greenwood, spokesperson for MidAmerican Energy, spoke with Our Quad Cities News via Zoom to share tips on staying cool and saving money. He said using appliances that give off [...]
	Kara Package: “Supergirl” and “Jackass: Best & Last” Given how bored I've been at so many cinematic superhero origin stories over the decades, I feel silly for actually feeling and writing this. But I really wish director Craig Gillespie's Supergirl had merely been a superhero origin story.
	Why metabolic health matters more than weight loss Why metabolic health matters more than weight lossFew medications have moved from the doctor’s office to the dinner table as quickly as Ozempic and Wegovy. A KFF Health Tracking Poll conducted in November 2025 found that roughly 1 in 8 U.S. adults has taken a GLP-1 medication, and public attention has followed the weight loss that can come with them.Much of the conversation has stayed focused on the weight scale, because weight is the first thing people can see. But physicians, researchers, and science-driven companies are paying closer attention to what happens beneath that visible change.The deeper conversation is about metabolic health and why a lower number does not always indicate how well the body is working. And the science behind that question is now going well beyond research labs, asking everyone to rethink what metabolic health actually looks like from the inside out. Below, Fatty15 explains why metabolic health matters more than weight loss.HighlightsMetabolic health is determined by multiple factors, including blood sugar, insulin sensitivity, cholesterol, and blood pressure, not body weight alone.GLP-1 medications have helped shift the conversation from weight loss toward understanding the biological processes that drive long-term health.Lasting metabolic health is built through consistent habits such as quality nutrition, regular movement, adequate sleep, and working with healthcare professionals to monitor key health markers. What Is Metabolic Health, Really?Metabolic health is harder to pin down than most people expect, because no single test can capture it on its own. Researchers look at a group of connected markers that show how well the body processes food and turns it into usable energy. Those markers include blood sugar, insulin sensitivity, cholesterol, and blood pressure.When they move out of a healthy range, the risk for conditions like Type 2 diabetes and heart disease can rise. The American Heart Association has estimated that about 90% of U.S. adults fall somewhere on the cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic health spectrum.Getting a complete read requires looking at these markers together, because no single number can tell the full truth about someone’s health.Why Weight Alone Doesn’t Tell the Full StoryBody weight has long been medicine’s starting point for assessing health, but the research behind that approach has grown slightly more complicated. Body mass index, the formula built on height and weight alone, cannot distinguish between fat and muscle, and it cannot detect where fat lives in the body.Scientific American has reported on people who carry extra weight without the usual markers of metabolic disease, including healthy blood pressure and good insulin sensitivity. The reverse can also be true.Someone with a lower or average BMI can still have visceral fat around internal organs without knowing it, raising their risk for serious chronic conditions they may never see coming. “BMI is just one data point, along with many others,” said Dr. Wajahat Mehal, director of Yale’s Metabolic Health and Weight Loss Program.A fuller health assessment has to look past the scale and into the signals the body is giving.How GLP-1 Medications Are Changing the NarrativeOzempic was originally designed to treat Type 2 diabetes, not to reshape how the public thinks about weight loss. GLP-1, the hormone these drugs mimic, is naturally produced in the gut after eating, and its original job was to help the body regulate blood sugar by telling the pancreas to release insulin and slowing digestion.Weight loss was an unexpected result from early clinical trials, one that quickly overshadowed the drugsâ€™ original medical purpose. Dr. Bob Busch, an endocrinologist at Albany Med, told Spectrum News that the intent has always been medical. "This is not a drug to get someone in a bridesmaid's dress or a bikini," he said. "This is a drug for a chronic disease."Researchers have since shown that GLP-1 medications also affect appetite signals in the brain and hormone pathways tied to how the body manages energy. The scale may have made these drugs famous, but the science behind them is forcing a deeper conversation about what is happening inside the human body.The Building Blocks of Metabolic HealthMost of what supports metabolic health comes down to daily habits, but those habits do not need to be extreme to matter. Food quality, exercise, sleep, and stress management all shape how the body uses energy, and the benefit comes from making those choices often enough for the body to respond.The American Heart Association recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week, though CDC data shows only about 1 in 4 U.S. adults meets that target. Movement helps the body use blood sugar more effectively, while adequate sleep helps regulate appetite, energy, and recovery.Dr. Kenneth Wright Jr. of the University of Colorado Boulder, whose National Institutes of Health-funded work has examined sleep loss and metabolism, said people should “get adequate sleep as much as you can on a consistent basis.” Metabolic health often improves through patterns the body can rely on, and those changes can begin before major weight loss ever shows up on a scale.The Risks of Oversimplifying Weight LossChasing a smaller number on the scale has long been sold as the definition of better health, but clinical evidence is far more complicated. A clinical review available through the National Center for Biotechnology Information found that losing 5% to 10% of body weight over six months can improve blood sugar control, blood pressure, and cholesterol, but faster or more extreme weight loss can carry real risks.And those risks can include nutrient deficiencies, electrolyte imbalances, hormone changes, and psychological effects. That is where the weight loss conversation can become too narrow.A lower number may look like progress, but it does not show whether someone is nourished, maintaining muscle, sleeping well, or addressing the issues that shaped their health to begin with. Health has to be judged by how the body holds up over time, not by how quickly it changes.The Role of Medical and Professional GuidanceNo two bodies run on the same biology, and no two health plans should either. Primary care doctors track the markers that matter over time, while registered dietitians translate nutritional science into eating habits that fit a person's specific medical needs and daily life.Endocrinologists go deeper, specializing in hormonal conditions like insulin resistance and thyroid disorders that sit at the root of so much metabolic disease. Together, these professionals make decisions based on a patient's actual lab results, medical history, and how their body functions, rather than on what is trending on social media.Medications like GLP-1 drugs can be the right tool for the right person, but that determination belongs in a patient/doctor conversation, not inside a comment thread or Google search.Redefining Health Beyond the ScaleMeasuring health by how the body functions day to day, rather than by what a weight scale shows, is becoming a more central idea in medicine and in everyday life.That way of thinking makes room for the parts of well-being people actually feel each day, including energy, strength, sleep, and the ability to keep up with real life. And prevention belongs in that same conversation.Research published in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine found that consistent positive daily habits can cut the risk of heart disease by more than 80% and the risk of diabetes by over 90%. People are also becoming more active in their own health decisions, asking for lab results and learning what those markers reveal about how their bodies are working.A scale can show a change in size, but health literacy helps people understand what is changing underneath.A More Nuanced Approach to HealthWeight will always be part of the health discussion, but it is only one piece of a much larger biological picture. And the rise of GLP-1 medications has made that harder to ignore, pulling public attention toward the biology working beneath visible change.Metabolic health gives doctors and patients a clearer way to understand long-term well-being, because it looks at how the body functions rather than relying only on how it appears from the outside.The conversation around health is becoming more honest, and that honesty may be what people need most. It gives them permission to look past the number, ask better questions, and begin to understand what taking care of themselves actually requires.This story was produced by Fatty15 and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Does general liability insurance cover property damage? It depends. Does general liability insurance cover property damage? It depends.Does general liability cover property damage? In many cases, yes — it can help cover property damage your business causes to someone else’s property. However, it typically doesn’t help cover damages to your own business property. If there’s an accident, the cost to repair or replace damaged property can be significant. If you have general liability insurance, or if you’re looking to get it, coverage often depends on whose property is damaged and what caused the damage. ERGO NEXT covers the ins and outs of what to expect from this coverage.What property damage can general liability insurance cover?General liability insurance is designed to address accidental third-party property damage. If the damage is sudden and unintentional, coverage may apply.However, coverage can depend on the circumstances. For example:Intentional damage is typically not covered.Damage to your own business property is generally not covered under general liability.So, if your business unintentionally damages someone else’s physical property, general liability insurance may help cover the costs of the accident.Property falls into two categories: real property and personal property.Real property refers to land or things attached to land. This might include a building, a signpost, or trees sitting on the land.Personal property is all other types of property. This includes your stuff — things you own and can move around, like clothes, cars, art, jewelry, and electronics.Property is considered damaged if it:Loses monetary value, orLoses functionality1. Damage to a client’s building or structureSay you’re a painter who breaks a client’s window while working on their property. General liability insurance could help cover the cost.Or, for example, say you run a landscaping business, and your equipment accidentally damages a client’s irrigation system. General liability insurance coverage may help address the claim.Other examples may include:Damaging a client’s flooring during installation workCracking tile while moving equipmentBreaking cabinetry during renovationsIn many cases, general liability insurance can help with the cost to repair or replace that property.2. Damage to a customer’s personal propertySay you’re a nail technician, and you accidentally stain a customer’s designer handbag, and they sue you to recoup their loss. General liability insurance could help pay for court and legal fees.Other examples might include:Spilling cleaning solution on a client’s laptopKnocking over a vase while working in a client’s homeBursting a pipe that ruins your client’s wardrobeIf your work accidentally damages someone else’s belongings, general liability insurance may help with repair or replacement, so you’re not paying for expenses fully out of pocket.Does general liability cover damage to your own property?General liability can help cover damage your business causes to someone else’s property, such as a customer, passerby, supplier, or vendor.But a commercial general liability policy generally does not help cover damage to your own business property (for example, your building, computers, tools, inventory, products, business furniture and fixtures, or equipment).What type of insurance can help with your own business property?Some types of business insurance can provide coverage for your own business property. For your own protection, look for either commercial property insurance, business owner's policy insurance (also called BOP insurance), or tools and equipment insurance.1. Commercial property insuranceCommercial property insurance can help protect your own business from property damage. It can help protect your business gear, inventory, equipment, buildings, and income if a fire or another covered event requires you to close temporarily (if your policy includes business income insurance).The cost of commercial property coverage depends on a number of factors, including your company’s risk level, total property value, operations, claims history, and location.Commercial property insurance can help protect your business property, but it does not typically include liability coverage for injuries, defamation lawsuits, or damages to a third party’s property.2. Business owner’s policy insurance (BOP insurance)BOP insurance combines general liability insurance with commercial property insurance in one convenient, and often more affordable, package.A BOP can be custom-made to match the needs and risks of your company and industry. Because coverage is personalized to each business, the cost can vary. But you’ll usually pay less for BOP coverage than if you buy two separate policies.Bundling general liability and commercial property policies into a BOP can give you broader coverage that includes:Property damage to your building and its contents.Injuries your company or employees might cause to others.Loss of income if a fire, theft, vandalism, or other incident causes you to close temporarily for repairs.Some court and legal fees if you need an attorney.Copyright infringement in your advertising, such as libel, slander, or other advertising mistakes.Inventory replacement if a covered event damages your business property.3. Tool and equipment insuranceTools and equipment insurance, also called inland marine insurance, can help with protection for the work gear you bring to a job site. It could replace or repair your tools and equipment if it gets stolen or damaged on the job. You can get protection from some financial losses if the tool storage shed or trailer gets broken into, or if your contractor accidentally breaks the tools you need to finish the job.What property isn’t covered under general liability?General liability insurance is designed to address some claims around damage you or your employees cause to other people’s property, but it doesn’t cover everything related to property damage. Depending on your policy, general liability often doesn’t help cover:Damage to your own business property (building, tools, inventory)Intentional damageEmployee injuries (often handled by workers’ compensation)Professional mistakes or missed deadlines (often handled by professional liability insurance)Cyber incidents or data breaches, such as hacking, ransomware, or exposure of customer information (these are typically addressed by cyber liability insurance)Auto accidents (often handled by commercial auto insurance)What else could general liability insurance cover?In addition to protection from property damage, commercial general liability insurance can help protect you in other ways.A typical general liability policy includes:Bodily injury coverage for nonemployees hurt at your business.Legal costs and settlements for some legal actions against your business.Advertising injury and personal injury claims, such as defamation or infringing on someone’s copyright in your advertisement.General liability policy costs can vary. You can estimate your monthly or annual premium with a general liability calculator or see the exact price you’ll pay if you get a quote.7 tips to help prevent business property damageTotal damage prevention to business property isn’t possible, but finding and fixing your weak spots is key. Try these tips to protect yourself and your business from property damage:Perform routine maintenance: Inspect your property to check for business hazards before they become problems. Keep your building up to code.Take safety precautions. Use protective measures such as safety barriers, mats, or covers when working on projects that could potentially cause damage. Ask clients to remove valuables from the areas where you’re working.Get business insurance: Coverage that includes property damage (applied to your own things or someone else’s) can help share the risk.Install a security system: Cameras, alarms, and access control measures can deter potential intruders and record mishaps to back up your story in a legal claim.Install weatherproofing and fire safety measures: This could include storm windows, smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, and sprinkler systems.Train employees: Proper safety procedures and emergency protocols can minimize the risk of accidents that could lead to property damage.Keep detailed incident reports: Documentation is helpful if you need to file an insurance claim or defend yourself in a lawsuit.Combine action with insurance protection to help reduce the likelihood of property damage, insurance claims, and lawsuits.This story was produced by ERGO NEXT and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Check yourself or someone else: 2026 is the summer of ticks Check yourself or someone else: 2026 is the summer of ticksTicks have been spreading across Canada as the climate changes, and southern Ontario has seen a dramatic increase in several species of ticks, The Narwhal reports. Unfun fact: This province has 44 species in total, according to Public Health Ontario. But only one, the blacklegged tick, carries Lyme disease (more on that in a minute).Ticks have been on the rise in Canada for the better part of the last decade, Manisha Kulkarni, a professor in University of Ottawa’s School of Epidemiology and Public Health, says.“What we’re really seeing is the result of this multi-year trend of tick population expansion in North America,” she says. “And now we’re really seeing those populations establishing in more regions in southern parts of Canada, including in Ontario.”Key TakeawaysTick populations are spreading in Ontario, increasing the risk of Lyme disease.Of the 44 varieties of ticks found in the province, only one — blacklegged ticks — carry Lyme, but they make up more than half of all ticks here.Experts say people need to recognize the risk of ticks and Lyme in the outdoors, and check themselves and others.With warmer weather, ticks in Ontario are spreadingThere are a few factors encouraging the tick’s northward march, Kulkarni says, but “one of the main drivers is climate change.”“We’re not seeing as cold winters that would normally prevent them from surviving and reproducing, so they’re able to survive in more regions,” she adds.That longer warm season allows more time for ticks to find hosts — like people — to feed on, and to reproduce. As a result, every year populations establish in new areas that now have desirable conditions for ticks.The latest map from Ontario Public Health shows populations of blacklegged ticks as far north as Thunder Bay and Kenora, throughout the Ottawa Valley and in Owen Sound, on Lake Huron.While Ontario experienced some bitingly cold temperatures in Ontario this winter, Kulkarni says, “We also had lots of snow, which is a great insulator.” Ticks burrow down in the leaf litter, blanketed by snow, and stay cozy even when most are complaining about a stretch of -30 C (-22 F) days.So depending on where you live, it might be time to draw the blinds, strip down … and turn on the lights.How to check for ticks (or stop them before they get to you)How exactly should you check yourself and loved ones for ticks? Cover as much surface area as possible, according to Health Canada. Check your chest and back, and in your hair — and don’t forget the crevices: armpits (and kneepits), belly button and between your toes. Ticks also have a habit of going for the groin, unfortunately.To prevent ticks from reaching your skin in the first place, Health Canada suggests closed-toed shoes, long sleeves and pants — with your shirt tucked into your pants and your pants tucked into your socks. Ten minutes in a hot dryer will take care of any that hitched a ride on your clothes.Sticking to cleared paths and trails helps, too.And there may be ways to keep ticks away, more broadly, from outdoor spaces humans like to frequent. Kulkarni’s team at University of Ottawa recently released a study that found spreading wood chips at the edges of gardens and trails where ticks are prevalent effectively reduced the number that came looking for blood.How did they test that? Dragging a piece of flannel material across the ground before and after wood chips were laid to see how many latched on. It really tells you something about how easily ticks attach.Why do so many Canadian musicians have Lyme disease? Blame the deerAs ticks take on new territory, their presence isn’t just creepy and unwelcome. It’s actually a public health risk: Ask Justin Bieber, Avril Lavigne or Shania Twain.They’ve all publicly announced their diagnoses of the disease that, if left untreated, can cause neurological and cardiac issues, as well as arthritis.Some areas of the country and our province, particularly around Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, have a higher concentration of ticks carrying bacteria that cause Lyme disease. Though it’s the most common disease people get from ticks, Lyme isn’t the only one they carry. And while not all types of ticks can pass on Lyme disease, more than half of the ticks found in Ontario are of the blacklegged variety that can, according to Public Health Ontario’s recent report.How does it happen? After mating on the backs of deer, the female blacklegged tick drops to the ground and, in the spring, lays eggs among the leaf litter, Kulkarni explains. Those eggs hatch into larvae, which quickly go looking for their first drink of blood. Down among the leaves, that’s usually from a small animal like a mouse or bird. If that animal is infected with the bacteria that causes Lyme, the tick takes on the infection. When it’s larger and more active, in the nymphal stage, the tick will find a bigger animal or human to feed on, and pass that infection on to them. As they mature into adults, white-tailed deer, dogs and humans are all on the menu.“There’s several points in the cycle where humans are susceptible, but that tends to be during the nymphal peak of activity, in kind of the late spring and summer months, and then the adults, which are in the early spring and in the fall,” Kulkarni says.For a general rule of where there might be a risk of ticks, consider if it’s a place populated by white-tailed deer, Kulkarni says.But what do you do if you find one?Across Canada, diagnoses of Lyme disease have skyrocketed from 104 cases in 2009 to a preliminary count of 7,105 cases in 2025, though the increase is likely due to awareness and increased testing, as well as a rise in cases. So far this year in Ontario, 236 cases have been identified by Public Health Ontario.If you can remove the tick within a day, you can spare yourself a lot of trouble — it typically takes more than 24 hours after it attaches for the tick to pass on the bacteria that causes Lyme disease. Properly removing it means pulling the tick out straight, rather than twisting or bending, which risks leaving some of its mouthparts (unfortunately, that is the proper anatomical term) embedded.Next up? Keep the tick. Put it into a sealed container and take it to your doctor for testing. And if you can’t wait to know whether you’re holding a little blacklegged tick hostage — the kind that carries Lyme — you can also submit photos of the little offender online, where it will be quickly identified by kind-hearted insect enthusiasts.If you have been bit, or even suspect you may have been, look out for Lyme symptoms like a rash or fever, headache or joint pain, Kulkarni says. These can occur even without the most famous Lyme symptom: a bullseye rash around the bite. “Not everybody actually gets the rash, so it’s important to look out for those other symptoms,” she says. If you have a summer fever, she adds, “that’s a good indication you should get checked out for Lyme, especially if you’ve been in an area where ticks are present.”It’s not about being afraid to go outside, she adds, but equipping yourself with knowledge: both of the level of risk for ticks and Lyme wherever you’re going (there’s a map for that) and how to properly remove one of it digs in (there are kits for that — and tweezers work, too).Kulkarni likens the threat of ticks to another unpleasant natural hazard. “There are settings where we know there’s poison ivy. People don’t go off the trail because they might brush along it, and if they do get a rash, they know what to do, right?” she says. “Tick bites can be a bit more serious than that, but it’s the same concept: that being out in nature isn’t without risks, but by knowing what the risks are and how to manage them, you can really reduce any potential impacts.”This story was produced by The Narwhal and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Apple Maps ads could help businesses capture decision-ready searchers Apple Maps ads could help businesses capture decision-ready searchersApple Maps ads may soon give businesses a new way to appear in sponsored local search results inside Apple Maps. Businesses that rely on nearby, high-intent searches — like restaurants, hotels, healthcare providers, and local services — could gain another channel for customer discovery and local visibility.While some users have criticized the move, Apple Maps ads could become an important new layer of local search visibility for businesses competing for decision-ready traffic. WebFX explored how businesses could benefit from Apple Maps ads and which types of businesses will benefit most.What are Apple Maps ads?Apple Maps ads are sponsored placements that allow businesses to appear more prominently in sponsored Apple Maps search results and “Suggested Places” recommendations for relevant local searches. Apple says ads will be clearly labeled and initially rolled out in the U.S. and Canada in 2026.Apple Maps ads could put your business in front of consumers at key decision momentsAt first glance, this move may seem like Apple simply copying Google’s playbook. But the bigger story is how local search behavior is changing.Consumers today search and make decisions in local ecosystems that don’t always include opening up Google. They might ask Siri, open Apple Maps, use voice search, or discover businesses through apps or AI-powered recommendations. In many cases, these searches take place as users are preparing to take action, like choosing a restaurant or booking a hotel.While traditional search ads often capture research intent, map searches capture decision intent, making ads in Apple Maps especially valuable. Further, Apple Maps is already deeply integrated into how many users navigate daily decisions with fingerprints across iPhones, CarPlay, Apple Watches, and Siri searches. That’s why even limited visibility inside Apple Maps could become highly competitive for certain industries.Which businesses could benefit most from Apple Maps ads?Businesses that depend on local discovery and immediate intent will see the most immediate value from Apple Maps ads, including:RestaurantsCoffee shopsHotelsHealthcare providersHome services companiesRetail storesAuto repair shopsFitness studiosTourism businessesFranchises with multiple locationsHow businesses should prepare before Apple Maps ads officially launchEven though Apple Maps ads aren’t officially launched yet, businesses can start preparing now.Claim and optimize your business locations with Apple BusinessMake sure your Apple Business is accurate and up to date with your:Business name and detailsLocationsHours of operationCategories and servicesPhotosApple uses business listings to power how businesses appear across Maps, Siri, and other Apple services.Audit Your local SEO basicsApple Maps still relies heavily on location accuracy and business data consistency. Now is a good time to review name, address, and phone number (NAP) consistency across all business listings, local citations, reviews, local landing pages, and location schema.Prepare for another competitive local ad channelGoogle Maps ads can already be highly competitive in some industries. If Apple Maps follows a similar model, businesses in crowded markets may eventually need dedicated local advertising strategies across multiple ecosystems, not just Google.This story was produced by WebFX and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Davenport receives $100K grant to redevelop Raphael's Emporium building The redevelopment will become a multi-tenant hair salon with potential space for another business.
	What you need to know about watching John Deere Classic The John Deere Classic starts this week at TPC Deere Run. Find key details on tickets, youth clinic, strict bag policy, and weekend concerts here.
	Davenport receives $100k state grant to restore Raphael's Emporium The restoration plans include a multi-tenant hair salon, future apartments and even possible spaces for food and drinks.
	Coal Valley crews respond to house fire; dog, resident safely escape The Coal Valley Fire Protection District responded to a house fire in the 1900 block of South Shore Drive on Sunday.
	American Psychological Association warns against AI therapy American Psychological Association warns against AI therapyNew research from the American Psychological Association suggests that AI chatbots are increasingly being used by patients as a substitute for care. In the APA’s 2026 Chatbots and Mental Health Survey, 77% of psychologists said patients had used AI for support, engagement, or a related purpose. Here, Wysa explores findings and recommendations from the report.Worryingly, nearly 2 in 5 psychologists (39%) said their patients had used AI to self-diagnose mental health conditions. More than 1 in 10 (13%) also said their patients had formed an “intimate or relationship-like” connection with an AI chatbot.The APA has also published a health advisory aiming to make it clear that generative AI should not be used for psychotherapy, psychological treatment, diagnosis or crisis support. The APA warns that the sense of reassurance given by AI chatbots can be misleading, as they are designed to produce responses that sound reasonable, calm and confident. However, a response that feels validating is not necessarily accurate, and short-term relief does not always convert into lasting symptom improvement. Generic AI chatbots are built to keep users engaged and to keep them talking.Despite these concerns, the growing use of AI in this context is understandable. For many people, the choice is not between AI and therapy but between AI and no support at all. Access to mental health care remains uneven, particularly in the U.S. Cost, insurer limits, and geography all play a part, but so do stigma, a preference for handling problems privately, and difficulty judging the severity of one’s own symptoms. For someone lying awake for hours with worry in the middle of the night, an AI chatbot can help immediately and anonymously. In this context it functions less as a replacement for therapy and more as an alternative to search engines, social media or informal advice from friends or family.The APA draws a line between uses that may be relatively low risk and those that carry more significant potential for harm. Higher-risk uses include asking a chatbot to diagnose a condition, determine whether medication is needed, manage suicidal thoughts, or provide guidance during a crisis. These are areas where clinical expertise, ethical oversight, and accountability are essential. According to the APA, lower-risk users might use AI to talk them through a breathing exercise, learn general information about managing stress, or help think through difficult thoughts before a therapy session.When patients bring AI-generated advice into their therapy sessions, clinicians are now expected to review it, without seeming to judge a patient for attempting to find answers for themselves. The APA says in some cases this could even interfere with the therapy process by reinforcing distorted thinking. There are also ethical concerns as 36% of psychologists had patients who appeared to have become dependent on a chatbot, and 15% reported they had patients who had developed delusional beliefs after talking to AI.Nearly 9 in 10 psychologists (89%) said they were worried that chatbots might encourage self-harm, or fail to correctly recognize when a user was in crisis. Delayed or inappropriate responses can have serious consequences in these circumstances. Privacy is also an issue, as people are willing to share highly personal information in conversations with AI chatbots without checking how that data is stored or used.The APA also said it is unclear whether patients are mainly using general-purpose chatbots or tools developed with clinical input and tested against established therapeutic frameworks. AI that has been built with clinical oversight is more likely to be ethically responsible — for example, by declaring what it can and can’t do early on, avoiding making diagnosis, and building in safeguards such as escalation to human support. The APA says that responsible AI tools should be open about not intending to replace a therapist, doctor, or crisis service and should explain their limitations and personal data policy transparently.The APA recommends that anyone using AI should discuss it with a clinician straight away, so that any information or strategies can be evaluated, and so that the therapist can make sure they don’t conflict with an ongoing treatment plan. Useful elements can be incorporated, while the risk of misunderstanding or disrupting care can be mitigated.Reassuringly, most psychologists do not believe AI will replace human therapy. Only 1 in 4 said they expect patients will prefer chatbots to human clinicians one day. This suggests that the human-patient therapy relationship offers something AI cannot easily replicate, perhaps trust, accountability, qualified expertise and experience.In its reports, the APA has not declared that all interaction with AI is harmful, but that its role should be clearly understood. Used with care, it may help supplement human therapist care. The APA has set out clear guidelines to avoid the risk of AI becoming a substitute in situations where it is not equipped to provide safe or effective support. However, huge numbers of people still face barriers to accessing mental health care, and for them, responsible AI still appears to be a better option than no support at all.This story was produced by Wysa and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	America is running out of therapists. Here's how primary care might have to fill the gap. America is running out of therapists. Here's how primary care might have to fill the gap.137 million Americans now live in an area officially defined as a Mental Health Professional Shortage Area, accounting for 40% of the overall U.S. population, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration. The largest shortages appear among mental health counselors, psychologists, adult psychiatrists, addiction counselors, mental health and substance use disorder social workers, and psychiatric nurse practitioners. Several roles show particularly high unmet need, meaning projected supply is far below estimated demand. This means that 4 in 10 Americans simply cannot access support, regardless of insurance status or ability to pay.Researchers have said for decades that primary care has become the country’s main mental health safety net, not because family doctors aim to become mental health providers, but because they are often the first place people turn to for help. They see patients over many years, know their history and are usually trusted. When someone finally feels ready to talk about what’s bothering them, they often bring it up with their doctor during a visit that was booked for a physical health issue.This was confirmed by a 2024 survey by West Health and Gallup, which found that 70% of Americans would prefer their primary care provider to address both their physical and mental health in the same visit. This number did not come as a surprise to clinicians surveyed for the same report. The separation between physical and mental health has never mapped well onto how people experience being unwell, or how they ask for help. If primary care is already doing this work, the question now is whether it is properly equipped to do so.Below, April Health examines this question in detail.Identifying Mental Health Problems in a Primary Care AppointmentConsider how this works in practice. A patient goes in to have their persistently aching knee looked at by their doctor. They might be asked to complete a routine depression screening questionnaire while they are in the waiting room. If their score reaches a minimum threshold, the doctor may note it down. The patient might leave with a mental health referral, but might not if it didn’t come up during the appointment because of time restrictions. The depression goes unaddressed and is left to worsen. This is the exact gap the collaborative care model was designed to close.Collaborative care was developed at the University of Washington in the mid-to-late 1990s. The model has been studied for more than two decades and is validated by more than 90 randomized controlled trials. Rather than referring patients to a third-party specialist, it gives them access to a behavioral health care manager alongside their existing doctor, overseen by a consulting psychiatrist. The care manager checks with patients, tracks symptoms using validated tools, and the psychiatrist regularly reviews decisions and helps guide the treatment plan, which is managed by the primary care doctor.The evidence that collaborative care is effective is strong. The IMPACT trial, published in JAMA in 2002, followed patients aged 60 and older across primary care clinics and found that collaborative care more than doubled the effectiveness of depression treatment compared to usual care. A 2016 review of studies in JAMA Psychiatry confirmed that the benefits apply to patients coping with chronic physical conditions along with depression.Uptake Has Been SlowDespite the evidence and convenience, only a small fraction of primary care practices in the United States have implemented collaborative care. The obstacles are largely practical.Reimbursement has been the biggest issue, historically; without clear billing pathways, primary care practices have had little financial incentive to invest in the staffing and infrastructure the model calls for. This is now changing significantly, with Medicare reimbursing collaborative care through billing codes and Medicaid coverage expanding across many states, according to the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute and the American Psychiatric Association. Most major commercial insurers now cover the services as well.A February 2026 report from Shatterproof and the Bowman Family Foundation found that the number of commercially insured patients billed for collaborative care grew 26-fold between 2018 and 2024, although that growth remains patchy, with some states seeing more than 1% of eligible individuals while others serve fewer than 0.05% of eligible people.Building the care team itself has restricted adoption of the model. An in-house collaborative care team requires practices to recruit and train both care managers and psychiatrists, then make it financially viable. Practices are now addressing this by outsourcing to organizations that provide the model on their behalf. Even then, success depends on continued coordination between three people who have typically worked in separate systems, which takes time and investment that most practices have not previously had reason to make.Designed for Everyday StressCollaborative care isn’t designed to replace the existing mental health system. People with complex needs, severe conditions, or multiple diagnoses need higher levels of care, and the broader shortage of mental health professionals needs its own mitigation policy. But for the millions of Americans living in mental health staff shortage areas, waiting for this to be solved would take too long. For patients with higher level needs who face long waits for specialist care, collaborative care can help in the meantime, supporting patients through the system and ensuring they are not left to manage alone.Primary care has carried this load for many years without being properly set up to do it, and that is at last starting to change.This story was produced by April Health and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Cannon fire planned at Rock Island Arsenal for commander welcome ceremony Cannon fire will be heard at Rock Island Arsenal on Monday and Wednesday as the installation welcomes Maj. Gen. Eric Riley.
	Jury convicts man in 2024 Moline double homicide that killed two teens A Rock Island County jury has convicted Israel Martinez of first-degree murder in the May 2024 shooting deaths of two Moline teenagers.
	Test and improve your AI agents with AI agent evaluation Test and improve your AI agents with AI agent evaluationYou roll out a promising AI agent that looks flawless in demos. It picks the right tools, executes the correct steps, and closes the loop without errors. Then you drop that same agent into your actual workflow and it immediately forgets how reality works. It chooses the wrong tool, loops endlessly, or hallucinates outputs.Sandbox tests don't reveal the entire picture. So before you let an agent loose on real customers or real data, you need a way to test how it behaves against messy real-world scenarios like missing fields, rate limits, and the human habit of asking for things in ways that make no sense.AI agent evaluation is how you test whether an agent behaves reliably and safely under real conditions. The goal is to identify what's broken before the agent is deployed around your organization.Below, Zapier explains the concept of AI agent evaluation, and shows you how to assess AI agents that fit directly into your workflow and how to work to improve them.What is AI agent evaluation?AI agent evaluation is the process of testing autonomous AI systems against real tasks and real constraints. This assessment goes beyond just the model's responses to include the entire apparatus that makes autonomy possible, including tools, memory, permissions, retries, and decision-making logic.Here's an example to make things clearer:You instruct an AI agent to create a Jira ticket, summarize the issue, and notify teammates in Microsoft Teams. In demos, the output is flawless: The ticket is created, the summary is crisp, and the message lands in the right channel.But then production arrives, dragging reality behind it. You notice that some required fields are missing or that API limits are kicking in.AI agent evaluation is about deliberately surfacing those failure modes before they surface themselves in the form of a broken incident process. A proper evaluation of that Jira scenario would allow you to:Validate tool selection: Does the agent use Jira and Teams the way you intended?Assess input handling: Does it pass required fields to the API, validate inputs, and handle missing info without guessing?Test error recovery: When Jira returns an error, rate limit response, or a partial success, does the agent retry, escalate, or stop safely?Measure overall task completion: Does it complete the workflow reliably across repeated runs and real variability?This can sound similar to evaluating large language models (LLMs) like GPT or Gemini, and there is overlap—you still care about reasoning quality, instruction-following, and factuality. But the scope is different.AI agent evaluation vs. LLM evaluationLLM evaluation is an assessment of output quality—how accurate the model is, whether its responses are relevant to the prompt, how coherent the reasoning is, and how often it drifts into confident nonsense. It helps you answer the comparatively narrow question of suitability. For example, is this AI model good enough for the kinds of inputs and outputs we care about, and does it behave reliably when asked to do X?AI agent evaluation, by contrast, operates at the system level. It measures whether the agent can plan, use tools, recover from failures, and complete tasks safely.Why evaluate AI agents?An October 2025 survey of enterprise leaders by Centiment for Zapier found that 86% of companies have adopted AI agents. These systems have clearly shifted from experimental to production. So, if you're also an adopter, it's vital to understand how agents behave before you scale them.Here are some key reasons to perform AI agent evaluation: Reliability: Autonomous agents should make dependable decisions with a clear business outcome. Evaluation helps you find failure points before users do, because users have a special talent for discovering edge cases at the exact moment you are least prepared to handle them.Cost control: AI agents create review cycles, rework, and the kind of downstream clean-up that often consumes more time than the original task ever would have. They can also trigger unwanted tool calls and API requests, increasing operational costs.User trust: If an agent performs an incorrect action in a user-facing workflow, the failure is immediately visible. Evaluation reduces the odds of public mistakes, not by promising perfection, but by shrinking the surface area where the agent can do something spectacularly unhelpful.Compliance: Proper AI evaluation helps regulated industries establish audit benchmarks and document expected behavior, like what the agent is allowed to do, what it should do under defined conditions, and what it must never do.Observability: A systematic assessment process helps you understand why an agent succeeded or failed and the chain of reasoning and system behavior that led it there. That makes issues faster to diagnose and fix, and it prevents the most demoralizing mode of all—random failure that nobody can reproduce but everyone can feel.Once your agents move beyond demos, it's essential to gauge whether they're helping or manufacturing unwanted problems at scale. Evaluation is how you find out before the agent decides for you.AI agent evaluation criteriaWhen you're evaluating AI agents, you're judging them across some specific dimensions. Depending on what you're building, you might prioritize accuracy, speed, or safety.Regardless of your use case, your AI agent evaluation should focus on the following core areas.Accuracy and correctnessAccuracy measures whether an agent's outputs and actions are correct for the task.One real-world example is a financial agent used for reporting and forecasting. In that setting, the tolerance for "close enough" is effectively zero. So, gauging accuracy comes down to whether the agent produces outputs that are safe to use in actual workflows.The key questions in this evaluation are:Does the agent give factually correct answers?Does it complete tasks as specified?Those questions then map to concrete AI agent evaluation metrics. Here's a quick look at them:Exact match: Checks whether the agent's output mirrors a predefined, expected result—useful when the correct answer is known and structured.F1 score: Tests the accuracy of the system by balancing precision and recall, which is especially valuable when the output is partially correct or contains multiple elements that need to be captured.Human eval score: Users review the output, rate performance, and provide feedback on whether the result was actually usable, appropriate, and aligned with expectations.The important caveat is that "accuracy" is never just about the output text. For example, if you have an email drafting agent, the accuracy check doesn't merely include whether the prose sounds nice. It includes whether it selected the right recipients, matched the intended tone, included or referenced the correct attachments, and followed whatever rules your organization considers non-negotiable.Reliability and consistencyReliability is about whether the AI agent behaves consistently across repeated runs and similar inputs.In multi-agent systems, reliability becomes even more dependent on coordination. For instance, how well agents hand off work, preserve context, and avoid stepping on each other's toes. That's when you need to focus on good AI agent orchestration.To evaluate reliability, you're really asking two questions:Does the agent perform the same way across similar inputs, or does it produce meaningfully different decisions and outputs each time you run it?How often does it fail or refuse tasks it should be able to handle, especially when the task is well within its defined scope?There are three practical metrics to consider for this subtype of AI agent evaluation:Success rate: Tells you what percentage of runs end in the intended completion state.Error rate: Captures how often runs fail outright, including tool errors, missing required fields, or logic breakdowns.Variance across runs: Measures how much the agent's output changes when executing the same task repeatedly, which is especially important when the system is expected to be deterministic in its actions, even if its language is not.For example, think about an invoice processing agent. In a demo, it's easy to feed it pristine invoices with consistent layouts and perfectly populated fields and declare victory.In real operations, invoices arrive in all the forms humans can invent, complete with missing fields, different templates, inconsistent naming, odd line-item structures, and occasional creative formatting. If your agent only works when the data is structurally perfect, it will fail the moment it meets real customer inputs. Reliability-focused evaluation helps you find exactly where it breaks, how often it breaks, and what the safe fallback should be, whether that's a retry, a clarification request, or a human handoff before the system starts making up values to "complete" the task.Speed and efficiencySpeed refers to how quickly an agent completes a task. Efficiency is what it costs to do it: tokens consumed, tool calls made, retries triggered, and all the other invisible, expensive "meter running" behaviors.To address this, you need to answer the questions below:How long does the agent take to complete tasks?How many API calls or tokens does it burn to get there?The metrics here are straightforward and, importantly, comparable over time:Latency (p50, p95, p99): Percentiles that show the distribution of response time, which is more useful than an average because users experience the full spectrum of performance rather than an abstract average.Cost per task: Calculates the price of completing a task, typically derived from token usage plus any paid tool calls.Tokens used: Measures how much computational resources the agent consumed, which is often the fastest way to spot runaway verbosity, unnecessary reasoning loops, or prompts that are doing too much work.A research AI agent is a clean example because expectations are naturally high. Ideally, it should generate responses within a few seconds. But speed isn't the only goal. If the agent achieves low latency by making excessive API calls, re-querying sources unnecessarily, or retrying aggressively, your costs can balloon. That's where efficiency becomes the necessary counterweight.AI agent evaluation lets you see whether the agent is fast but wasteful, slow but cheap, or, in the worst case, both slow and expensive. Once you can measure that trade-off, you can then tune its performance to balance speed and efficiency.Safety and guardrailsSafety measures whether an agent stays within the boundaries you set, such as permissions, policies, data access rules, and the scope of what it's allowed to do. Safety becomes unskippable the moment an agent has access to sensitive data, because a "helpful" action is only helpful if it's also allowed.In this area, you should get answers to the following questions:Does the agent stay within intended boundaries, even when a user asks nicely, insists repeatedly, or tries to sneak in a request that bypasses safety filters?Does it refuse harmful or out-of-scope requests reliably, without refusing legitimate work or leaking information in the process?Pay attention to these metrics to analyze safety and guardrails:Jailbreak resistance: Helps gauge how well the AI agent maintains its intent boundaries after attempts at manipulation, including prompt injection and social engineering tactics.Refusal accuracy: Measures whether the agent refuses when it should and complies when it should, which is critical because both false negatives (complying with a disallowed request) and false positives (refusing a valid request) are expensive in different ways.Hallucination rate: Tracks how often the agent produces factually incorrect output.If you have an HR assistant agent, for example, a proper evaluation would be to check a few things.It shouldn't expose confidential employee data, and it should refuse unauthorized requests even if those requests are phrased as routine or urgent. You'd also want it to handle sensitive topics carefully, avoid inventing policies or benefits details, and operate strictly within its assigned permissions.A proper safety evaluation would test an AI agent across multiple guardrails and scenarios—benign requests, ambiguous requests, clearly disallowed requests, and adversarial prompts designed to coax it into oversharing. The goal is to confirm that the agent behaves responsibly in different contexts.User experience and helpfulnessHere, you're evaluating ergonomics, not intelligence. The agent can be technically brilliant and still fail if users find it confusing, verbose, or exhausting to operate.The metrics in this area should address two main questions:Do users find the agent useful and easy to work with?Does it communicate clearly?The metrics here should reflect lived experience:User satisfaction scores (CSAT): Measures how users feel about the interaction and whether the result met their expectations.Task completion rate: Calculates how often the agent successfully completes a user-defined task end-to-end, which is the most direct indicator that it is helping rather than generating work.Follow-up question rate: The number of times an agent asks for additional information before proceeding, which is a useful proxy for friction—some clarifying questions are healthy, but repeated back-and-forth often signals poor prompts, missing context, or unclear input requirements.For example, take an onboarding agent, an AI whose job is to welcome new users and usher them through setup. Ideally, it should behave like a sophisticated butler greeting guests at your mansion—attentive, discreet, competent.In this case, you'd want to verify that new users can complete setup without getting stuck, abandoning the flow, or needing repeated human intervention. If users drop off midway, loop through the same questions, or misconfigure key settings, that's a UX problem even if the agent is technically correct.From there, you can consult completion rate, CSAT, and quick in-product surveys to identify friction points and improve UX for users going forwardHow to evaluate AI agentsYou can perform an AI agent evaluation in five steps. The goal is to assess both outcomes (did it work?) and behavior (how did it get there?) under working conditions.1. Define your success criteriaIt's easy to track a dozen technical metrics and still have no clue what your agent's doing in production. If that's true, get to the basics. Know your business goals and define success for your particular use case.Start with one sentence: "This agent succeeds if it can [specific outcome] for [who] under [constraints]."Now, pick your top three evaluation priorities from the section above (accuracy, safety, speed, reliability, UX) and set explicit targets.For each priority, define the core metrics that indicate if the agent is production-ready. The simplest way to choose them is to work backwards from the primary outcome.Make your goals specific and measurable. "Be accurate" is not a goal. It also doesn't help you debug anything when the agent fails. "Achieve 90% correct outputs on our test set" is a clear goal that tells you what to measure, what to improve, and whether you're getting better.2. Build realistic test scenarios and datasetsNow we get to the beating heart of your AI agent evaluation process.Once you define success criteria, build a test suite with three buckets:Common inputsEdge casesPotential failuresRun these scenarios on the shortlisted agents. In this process, you can collect data on accuracy, latency, and success rate. Then deliberately make the tests less polite by introducing noisy data, ambiguous instructions, and simulated API failures.If an agent relies on tools or external APIs, capture reference trajectories—step-by-step records of the system's actions, including which tools it chose, what inputs it sent, what responses it received, and what it decided next. Trajectories are how you move from "it failed" to "it failed because it selected the wrong tool, passed an invalid payload, retried too aggressively, and then declared success anyway."Overall, this stage is your baseline. It establishes what "good" looks like under realistic conditions, exposes where agents are brittle, and gives you the concrete evidence you need to tune prompts, tighten guardrails, adjust tool permissions, and set the ideal parameters for production.3. Implement AI observabilityWhen you invest in AI agents, it's important to observe their internal processes. This monitoring is your holy grail for assessing an agent's success or failure. Otherwise, you're debugging by guesswork.To implement observability, you can:Log every step of execution.Visualize the traces.Segment the logs.4. Run multi-layer evaluationsThere are two levels to evaluate in this step:Outcome level: Check the agent's success rate, accuracy, and relevance of its output. This assessment should run in all scenarios.Trajectory level: Focus on plan quality, tool selection, and the sequence of actions. Notably, you should compare them against reference traces.Note: Use metrics like exact match, precision, and recall for comparison.No single evaluation catches every failure mode, so you can rely on a combination of the following methods:Rule-based/code checks: Best for schema validation, required fields, and API response accuracyLLM-as-a-judge: Using a model to score outputs for criteria like relevance, reasoning quality, relevance, and adherence to instructionsHuman reviews: For high-risk tasks like compliance checks, handling sensitive data, or user-facing actions5. Iterate, experiment, and monitor in productionAI agents operate in changing environments—new data, updated tools, different user behaviors—which means the evaluation loop needs to run continuously.Start by running A/B tests and regression suites to catch behavioral drift. In production, you can use live monitoring dashboards to track metrics such as success rate, latency, safety violations, and user ratings.As your setup grows, you can naturally use multiple agents. In such cases, the eval process gets harder to manage. This is where AI orchestration tools become useful. They can help coordinate evaluations, automate retries, and keep monitoring repeatable. Zapier AI agent evaluation examplesYour evaluation process varies by agent use case. Here are some practical ways you can apply agent evaluation in different situations.Customer support AI agent evaluationCustomer support agents are the highest-stakes UX test an AI can face. Every mistake is visible to a real user who already had a problem. That makes accuracy, resolution rate, customer satisfaction, and escalation rate your critical metrics—in roughly that priority order.Your evaluation dataset should be real, anonymized support tickets with known resolutions.Concrete targets might look like:Answering accuracy ≥ 90%Escalation rate ≤ 10%First-response resolution rate ≥ 70%CSAT≥ 4.2/5Generally, such AI agents can fail due to hallucinating company policies, providing outdated information, or failing to escalate in time. If any of these show up in testing, they need to be fixed before go-live, not patched afterward.Data analysis AI agent evaluationData analysis agents are less about conversation and more about accuracy and speed. A slow agent that gets the right answer still beats a fast agent that confidently gets it wrong, but neither is acceptable in production.The evaluation dataset should contain analytical queries with pre-computed correct answers.Here's an example of key metrics:Correct analysis ≥ 95%Runnable, error-free codeReproducibility rate ≥ 90%Time to insight ≤ 5 secondsThe agent can fail if it misinterprets data schemas or generates broken visualizations. Multi-step analysis is an effective method for evaluating these AI agents.Lead qualification AI agent evaluationPrecision and consistency are crucial here, since they directly influence revenue decisions. Lead scoring accuracy, false positive rate, and response quality are typically prime metrics.The best AI agent evaluation dataset for lead qualification is historical lead data with known outcomes. You can probably get this information from your sales team.Here's what the success criteria can look like in this case:Minimum 85% agreement between lead score and human sales rep assessmentLead response quality rating ≥ 4.0/5False positive rate ≤ 10%However, you should watch for over-qualifying weak leads, missing key signals, or relying on incomplete data.Content creation AI agent evaluationTo evaluate content creation AI agents, you'll need to look beyond factual accuracy and focus on subtler measures that reflect brand voice consistency and high-quality content.For content creation agents, the most common failure mode is rarely factual error—it's usually brand voice drift, or generic writing. Quality, tone, and alignment are the metrics that matter most.You can evaluate the AI by comparing the agent-generated content against your editorial template.Here's what key targets can look like:An average quality rating of 4/5 from in-house editorsFactual accuracy ≥ 95%Revision rate ≤ 20% (rewriting large portions of the content)These agents can fail if the writing is generic or uninspired, responses contain factual inaccuracies, or the tone is off-brand.Build AI agents you can trustAI agent evaluation helps you catch the failures that demos conveniently hide: wrong tool calls, missing fields, brittle edge-case handling, and unsafe behavior. But effective assessment requires a clear framework, metrics, and a repeatable process to connect tools, manage logic, and re-test agents.This story was produced by Zapier and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
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	4 ways organizations can prepare to scale AI successfully 4 ways organizations can prepare to scale AI successfullyKPMG’s Q1 2026 AI Pulse Survey found that the biggest hurdle for businesses to realize ROI from AI investment is no longer spend, it’s scale. Sixty-five percent of respondents (a 97% increase from Q4 2025) cite difficulty scaling use cases, and 62% (a 148% increase from Q4 2025) point to skills gaps as the top barriers to demonstrating ROI.Organizational readiness for AI adoption is now imperative to move from AI pilots to enterprise adoption that actually delivers returns. Below, Teradata, an autonomous AI knowledge platform, outlines four foundations of enterprises that are prepared for autonomous AI:Trusted data at the foundationOperational infrastructure that scales with demandClear accountability for model behaviorValue redeployment that aligns with strategic objectivesThe technology makes people more productive, but productivity is a capacity unlock, not automatically a value unlock. Freed capacity only becomes value when the organization is designed to absorb and redeploy it.1. Trusted data at the foundationReliable data is fundamental for scaling AI. In 2020, Gartner research estimated that poor data quality costs organizations “at least $12.9 million a year on average.” A 2025 McKinsey report shows that 88% of organizations now use AI in at least one function, yet only 7% report that it’s fully deployed and integrated across the organization — and inaccuracy is the number one reported risk organizations say they are working to mitigate.AI is only as reliable as the data feeding it. Enterprises that scale successfully treat data quality, lineage, and access controls as non-negotiable.One example is Zillow’s data science “disaster” of 2021. The real estate company launched a program where it would use a machine learning algorithm to estimate home prices and then flip the houses for a profit. But it turned out that because they were using incomplete datasets, the company failed to accurately calculate prices. “We’ve determined the unpredictability in forecasting home prices far exceeds what we anticipated and continuing to scale Zillow Offers would result in too much earnings and balance-sheet volatility,” said Zillow Group co-founder and CEO Rich Barton in a statement at the time. Zillow ended up losing $304 million in one quarter on the project and laid off 25% of its workforce.2. Operational infrastructure that scales with demandReliable data is foundational for success in scaling AI, but building infrastructure to support that growth and demand is also critical. Despite the enthusiasm for AI, 2025 studies from IDC and MIT paint a grim picture: AI pilots are rarely turning into revenue-generating, full production systems.The IDC report suggests organizational readiness is a key reason: “The high number of AI POCs but low conversion to production indicates the low level of organizational readiness in terms of data, processes and IT infrastructure.” This makes sense, because POCs don’t stress-test systems. But there is a second gap the data doesn’t surface: Even when infrastructure is technically ready, organizations frequently haven’t specified what changes operationally once the AI is running. Without that, a successful POC has nowhere to land.Beyond reliable data, enterprises need an intelligence architecture that grows with the demands of AI. These models comprise a hybrid architecture (on premises and multi-cloud) with elastic compute; high-performance analytics engines that enable AI-grade real-time model scoring, large-scale data transformation, and parallel processing; and strong data governance and security.3. Clear accountability for model behaviorWho owns an AI decision when something goes wrong? Who’s responsible for checking model outputs and monitoring performance? Who will manage course correction?A lack of strong governance is a major barrier to scaling AI. A January 2026 Deloitte report found that although 74% of companies plan to deploy agentic AI within two years, only 21% believe they have a mature model for governance of autonomous agents. The same report stated that although AI is rapidly evolving beyond generative AI into agentic AI, only “42% of companies believe their strategy is highly prepared for AI adoption, and 30% say the same about risk and governance.”There are both protective and proactive stances enterprises can take. For example, Forbes points to the federal case of Garcia v. Character Technologies Inc., in which a court allowed that makers of an AI chatbot could potentially incur product liability based on design choices such as a failure to build in safeguards. The article noted, “The absence of human oversight and structured safety mechanisms not only creates operational risk — it creates legal and financial risk.”A Harvard Business School article sums it up: “Integrating AI into day-to-day tasks requires leaders who can acquire, scale, and build a workforce that uses AI responsibly, rather than allowing the technology to take over.”The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) provides a framework and a playbook that emphasize the importance of accountability and keeping a human in the loop to maintain governance and establish accountability. An article explaining the framework states its three core principles succinctly: “ensuring transparency, applying oversight that matches the level of risk, and clearly defining who is responsible for what.”4. Value redeployment that aligns with strategic objectivesData quality, scalable infrastructure, and sound governance address whether AI can work. The fourth foundation addresses whether it will actually generate value — and it is the one most consistently missing from enterprise AI programs.A 2023 BCG analysis found that only 26% of AI initiatives at large companies achieve significant financial impact. The gap is not technical. It is organizational. When AI makes a team more productive, that freed capacity has three possible destinations: It gets redirected to a higher-value named activity, it enables a downstream function to move faster, or it simply dissipates into lower-priority work and meetings. That third outcome — evaporation — is the default wherever no one has deliberately designed an alternative.The solution is specific. Before an AI initiative is approved, there should be a named answer to one question: Where does the freed capacity go? Not “people will focus on higher-value work,” but a concrete redeployment pathway, signed off by a named manager, describing exactly what the team does differently once the AI is running. Without it, productivity gains are real, but value creation is not.This also means targeting the right constraint. AI productivity gains convert to business outcomes most reliably when they address the function that is actually the bottleneck: the evaluation capacity that limits how many deals can progress, the relationship coverage that limits executive engagement, the signal quality that determines whether at-risk customers are caught in time. Gains applied elsewhere in the organization create backlog rather than results. Identifying the binding constraint and directing AI investment there is what separates organizations generating meaningful returns from those running impressive pilots.Although some organizations are struggling to launch and scale AI in the enterprise, the research indicates that there are clear steps companies can take to create a strong foundation as they adopt AI at scale. Companies must start with clean data, build the operational infrastructure to help AI scale into production, and implement strong human-in-the-loop governance to minimize risk. But those three foundations answer the question of whether AI can work. The fourth — named accountability for where freed capacity goes — answers the question of whether it will work.This story was produced by Teradata and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
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	DeSantis veto spares government entities from larger payouts in negligence suits Gov. Ron DeSantis said Monday he is vetoing a bill that would have increased the amount of money that people who sue the government can recover. (Getty Images)SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLEThis is a developing story and will be updated. Gov. Ron DeSantis announced on Monday that he’s vetoing legislation that would help people sue state and local government bodies, saying it would also increase the number of “unmeritorious” damages lawsuits and balloon local government costs during a time when residents want lower property taxes. “I have no question, no doubt that that would happen, so we’ll veto that, and, and also just with the local government property tax argument, you know, why would I want to impose more burdens on them?” DeSantis said during a Tampa press conference at which he signed the state fiscal year 2026-27 budget and tax reduction bill. Offered by Sarasota Republican Rep. Fiona McFarland, HB 145 would have increased the amount government entities could have to pay residents who they injure. Damages caps, last raised in 2010, are set at $200,000 per individual and $300,000 per incident. The legislation would have increased the caps to $350,000 per individual and $500,000 per incident. The announcement was met with praise by the special interest groups that opposed the bill throughout the session. “We applaud the Governor’s careful veto. Our coalition advocates for liability reform that serves Florida families, taxpayers and the public’s treasury,” the group said in a statement. The coalition includes 11 organizations including the Panhandle Area Educational Consortium, the Safety Net Hospital Alliance of Florida, the Florida Hospital Association, and the Florida League of Cities. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX. After three years of trying, Rep. Fiona McFarland finally moved her sovereign immunity bill across the legislative finish line on March 12, 2026. (Photo by Christine Sexton/Florida Phoenix) Sovereign immunity refers to the state’s authority to exempt itself from civil lawsuits, although the state does allow negligence claims against itself and its subdivisions — agencies, cities, counties, and public hospitals — within limits. Injured parties can sue for damages and collect within the liability thresholds established by law, now set at $200,000 per individual and $300,000 per incident. But if they win awards in excess of the limits they must go to the Legislature in the form of what’s called a claims bill to collect the overage. And that can be a very lengthy, and political, process. Once a claims bill is filed, each chamber’s presiding officer refers it to a special master, who essentially reconsiders the jury’s recommendation. That allows the defendant to challenge the jury verdict. Claims bills also go before House and Senate committees that consider special masters’ recommendations. Ultimately, the bills must pass in both chambers. A Phoenix review shows the Legislature in 2026 passed six claims bills totaling about $13 million. But DeSantis on Monday defended the claims bill process, saying it “disincentivizes frivolous lawsuits.” “You have the cap; if it’s above the cap, then you have an ability to seek a claim with, with the state of Florida, and those are, you know, that’s not litigation, you know, that’s that’s a different forum where that is.” Not suprrising DeSantis has a history of taking jabs at trial attorneys, blaming them for Florida’s reputation as a “judicial hellhole.” HB 145 was supported by the Florida Justice Association, which represents the trial attorneys. DeSantis last year vetoed a bill that would have repealed a 35-year-old law that prevents some families from suing for the wrongful death of loved ones due to medical malpractice. He also vetoed legislation in 2021 that would have repealed Florida’s mandatory no-fault automobile insurance coverage known as Personal Injury Protection, or PIP. In addition to vetoing legislation supported by the FJA, the governor pushed for changes to laws the FJA opposed, such as making it easier for insurance companies to deflect lawsuits filed their policyholders claiming denial or low-balling of benefits. Courtesy of Florida Phoenix
	Why culturally competent care matters: Bridging identity and mental health Why culturally competent care matters: Bridging identity and mental healthCulturally competent care matters because effective mental health treatment depends on whether a person feels understood, respected, and safe with their provider.By recognizing how identity, culture, and lived experience shape emotional distress, licensed therapists can build stronger trust, reduce barriers to care, and offer support that feels more personal and effective.As therapy becomes more common, experts are urging providers to recognize how identity and lived experience shape what care actually feels like for each patient.Key takeawaysCulturally competent care helps people feel understood by recognizing how identity and lived experience shape mental health.Many people from marginalized communities still face barriers to treatment, including bias, cost, and limited access to providers.Therapy is more effective when clients trust their provider and feel safe enough to be honest.Representation and cultural understanding can make it easier for clients to connect with a therapist and stay in care.The future of mental health care is moving toward more personalized, inclusive, and flexible support.More than half of adults living with a mental health condition in the United States never receive treatment, and the reasons go far beyond whether a therapist is available or affordable.Research published by the National Council for Mental Wellbeing shows that many people from marginalized communities face added challenges, including bias from providers and a lack of care that reflects how they experience stress or emotional pain. And even after someone decides to seek help, those challenges often continue.Research in the 2025 State of Stigma survey, conducted by BetterHelp, shows that more than 16,000 people across 23 countries still face fears and cultural beliefs that keep many from seeking support.And for those who do connect with a provider, that survey shows, the experience does not always feel right, with nearly one in three Gen Z respondents who had attended therapy reporting that they felt misunderstood. The efforts to expand mental health care have made a difference, but access alone has never guaranteed that someone will feel supported once they get there.What “Culturally Competent Care” Actually MeansCulturally competent care is one of the most important standards in modern mental health practice, and it requires more than clinical training alone. The American Psychological Association describes it as an effort to understand how a person’s cultural identity, background, and lived experience shape the way they process and express emotional pain.A provider working this way does not rely on a single clinical lens, since the same symptom can show up in very different ways depending on who is experiencing it and how they understand it.Research from Medical News Today shows that some communities express distress through physical symptoms like fatigue or stomach pain rather than naming sadness or anxiety directly. A provider who misses that difference may also miss what a client is trying to communicate.Cultural competence also requires an understanding of family and community ties, especially where care is shaped by more than one person’s voice.Why Representation and Understanding Matter in TherapyTherapy works best when a person feels safe enough to be honest, and that safety is built almost entirely on trust, according to Adam Greenberg, LCSW. He cites research by Horvath and Greenberg that clients who feel understood by their therapist are more likely to stay in treatment and make real progress.But for people who have experienced bias or dismissal from doctors and healthcare providers in the past, building that trust takes longer and requires more from a therapist than clinical training alone can provide.Greenberg adds that the strength of the relationship between a therapist and client predicts positive results more reliably than any specific therapy technique. And when a person arrives at therapy already carrying doubt about whether they will be heard, a single moment of feeling dismissed can end the process entirely.Mental Health Access Gaps Across CommunitiesGrowing awareness of mental health has not translated into equal access for everyone who needs care.A 2022 survey by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found that while rates of mental illness are similar across racial and ethnic groups in the United States, only 37.9% of Black Americans and 39.6% of Hispanic Americans received mental health treatment, compared to 56.1% of white Americans.Cost remains the most common barrier preventing people from seeking mental health care, and geographic disparities in provider availability can make access even more difficult depending on where someone lives. Affordability is the top barrier Americans identify when seeking mental health treatment, followed by difficulty finding a provider. Where someone lives can make that challenge even harder to overcome, with the Association of American Medical Colleges noting that 65% of rural counties have no practicing psychiatrist at all.And even when people do find their way to care, a provider workforce that remains largely white and often lacks training in cultural differences can leave patients without the level of care they need.Martyn Whittingham, PhD, a licensed psychologist writing for the American Psychological Association, addressed these access gaps, saying, “Too often people from marginalized communities struggle to access quality psychotherapy.”How the Healthcare Industry Is RespondingAcross the healthcare industry, institutions are moving beyond simply opening a clinic door and hoping people walk through it. The American Psychological Association has documented a growing effort to build care around the people receiving it, with more providers being trained to better understand how patients experience emotional distress.Those efforts to improve care are also happening earlier, as mental health support becomes part of primary care and more people encounter it before their situation becomes urgent. And telehealth has become a larger part of that response, with UnitedHealthcare’s behavioral health data showing that from January through June 2024, mental health conditions were the most common reason people used telehealth services nationwide.As more people begin care through these options, the way they choose a provider is also changing, with digital platforms giving them more control in finding someone who feels like a better fit from the start.Why Inclusivity Is Becoming a Standard ExpectationInclusivity has become a core expectation people bring to care, and few areas feel that more directly than mental health. Younger generations, especially Gen Z, are far more likely than older groups to see their identity as closely tied to how they experience emotional distress, and they look for providers who understand that connection without needing it explained.BetterHelp’s 2025 State of Stigma report found that Gen Z is more than twice as likely as Baby Boomers to experience moderate to severe anxiety, yet 37% of those who have sought counseling believe people who go to therapy are still seen as mentally weak.Holding both of those realities at once shapes how they approach care, with a strong desire for support alongside real doubt about whether it will feel safe or respectful. Culturally competent care responds to that doubt, and many health systems are beginning to treat it as a standard part of care rather than something extra.What the Future of Mental Health Care May Look LikeMental health care has come a long way, and the direction it is heading is more personal and more reflective of the people it actually serves. Research published in Psychology Today found that when therapy is tailored to a person’s specific needs rather than applied as a standard protocol, patients achieve better results than those receiving uniform treatment.Meeting those individual needs depends on how well a provider understands the person in front of them, which has led to provider networks expanding to include more bilingual clinicians and therapists from a wider range of backgrounds.Greater representation allows more people to begin care without explaining core parts of who they are, which helps conversations move forward more naturally. When those conversations begin with less strain, therapy becomes easier to return to, and flexible options like virtual care help remove the barriers that can interrupt that progress.Effective Care Starts With UnderstandingMental health care should always start with the person seeking help. And real understanding starts when a provider takes identity and lived experience seriously from the beginning. Those details shape how emotional pain is named, and they also affect whether therapy feels safe enough to trust.Culturally competent care helps providers listen with a deeper understanding before they begin to guide. And when understanding comes first, therapy has a better chance of becoming a relationship a person can return to. The future of mental health care should keep moving in that direction, with therapy that feels more personal and reaches the people who need it most.This story was produced by BetterHelp and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	A guide to secure voting software and compliance for credit unions A guide to secure voting software and compliance for credit unionsRegulatory scrutiny around election integrity is crucial. The potential for data breaches, incorrect election results, and noncompliance can have significant consequences for credit unions.The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) conducts comprehensive audits that focus on governance and voting procedures. Failure to comply can lead to legal challenges and severe reputational damage.Members anticipate a secure, transparent voting process. Organizations responsible for election failures can face recount expenses and frustrated members who no longer trust them. Ensuring secure voting software for credit unions eliminates these risks. But what should you be looking for in a trusted, compliant vendor?This guide from Survey & Ballot Systems (SBS) has everything you need to know.When Credit Unions Need Secure Voting SoftwareThere are several situations and processes where you’ll find that secure voting software is essential, such as:Board of directors elections: Annual board member elections typically require verification of members’ voting rights and strict, fair ballot procedures. The potential need for remote voting and scattered membership raises several security considerations.Supervisory committee elections (where applicable): For credit unions that elect their supervisory committee members, secure voting software is essential to manage the balloting process effectively, verify member eligibility, and ensure the integrity and transparency of the election results. This is important for upholding the rigorous standards of credit union governance.Merger votes: A process involving high-stakes elections under NCUA 12 CFR 708a, with member approval requirements to ensure compliant mergers. Documentation and audit trails are crucial for these votes, given the heightened scrutiny regulators and members face.Charter conversion votes: Whether federal-to-state or state-to-federal, they require a simple majority of 50% plus one for member approval. Because conversion votes are subject to regulatory requirements and review, maintaining accurate records and a clear audit trail throughout the voting process is essential.Bylaw amendments: Bylaw amendments typically receive less scrutiny than merger votes. But it’s still essential that member voting on governance changes remain democratic and transparent.Secure voting software for credit unions ensures compliance and maintains voting integrity.Understanding NCUA Regulatory RequirementsThe NCUA has several regulatory requirements. These are crucial for federally insured credit unions. The regulations are based on standards set by the Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC). 12 CFR 708a12 CFR 708a is a federal regulation. It dictates the procedures and requirements for federally insured credit unions that intend to convert to mutual savings banks (Subpart A) or merge into existing banks (Subpart C). The structured outline of this regulation helps credit unions manage these institutional changes while remaining compliant.Some of the main elements of this regulation that credit unions should be aware of include:Authority to convert (708a.102): A credit union may convert to a mutual savings bank or association with member approval, provided it follows all regulatory requirements. Prior NCUA approval isn’t required.Notice, disclosures, and communication (708a.103-708a.104): A credit union must provide clear, timely notices and disclosures to members during a proposed conversion. This includes a 90-day notice of intent to convert, a 60-day follow-up notice, and a 30-day final notice with a voting ballot. The NCUA also requires you to provide a 90-day notice of intent and a certification of the final vote results.Membership approval (708a.106): A conversion proposal must be approved by a majority vote of the members. The voting process must be conducted by secret ballot and conducted by an independent entity.Limitations on compensation (708a.111): A director or senior management official is prohibited from receiving any special economic benefits or compensation due to the conversion. Compensation can only be paid in the ordinary course of business.These are essential compliance requirements for NCUA approval.Governance and Election Integrity Standards12 CFR 708a concerns conversion and merger votes. However, it also states that all special meetings and votes must be conducted in accordance with applicable federal and state laws and other parliamentary procedures.While this regulation doesn’t explicitly reference the NCUA Federal Credit Union bylaws, it does require adherence to the NCUA’s overarching credit union governance.These standards include the following requirements:Supervisory committee audit and account verification: Federal Credit Union bylaws and NCUA regulations (12 CFR Part 715) mandate that the supervisory committee conduct an annual audit and verify members’ accounts.Federal standards for charter conversion votes: The mandated notice periods, disclosures to members, and use of secret ballots. This maintains the fairness and legality of the voting methods and procedures used.Documentation of voting requirements: 12 CFR 708a emphasizes maintaining a clear audit trail for conversion and merger votes, including who voted, when they voted, and how these results were verified. This includes documentation of the independent entity’s written certification of the final vote tally, including the number of members who voted, the number of affirmative votes, and the number of negative votes.Credit unions are also required to maintain accurate and complete member lists for eligibility verification. The board’s final certification to the NCUA must confirm that all materials used in credit union mergers were identical to those submitted to the NCUA. Discrepancies must be accompanied by copies and explanations.What Is SOC-2?SOC-2, also known as Service Organization Controls 2, is an auditing procedure. It ensures data security and maintains client privacy. It’s commonly adopted by technology companies that must meet compliance requirements related to security standards, confidentiality, and privacy.SOC 2 Type I evaluates controls at a specific point in time, while Type II evaluates them over a period that’s typically between six and 12 months. The procedure was created by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). While it’s not a legal requirement for election software, many state and local governing bodies will require it during vendor selection.SOC-2 Trust Service Principles ExplainedThe auditing standards required to achieve SOC-2 certification and compliance involve assessing systems and controls. These assessments are made against one or more of the following 5 Trust Service Principles:Security: Protecting systems and data from unauthorized access. This covers a range of criteria, including firewalls, two-factor authentication, and threat detection.Availability: Ensuring services and systems are operational and available.Processing integrity: Making sure that system processing is accurate, efficient, and properly authorized.Confidentiality: Protecting sensitive information, such as financial data, by only allowing access to authorized users.Privacy: Dictating the way in which personal information is collected, used, and disposed of, including organizational privacy policy specifics.While security is mandatory, organizations aren’t required to comply with every principle. The other four principles are optional and chosen based on the specific offering a company provides or the type of data it handles.Why SOC-2 Compliance Matters for Voting SoftwareSOC-2 compliance requires a meticulous independent audit to verify the effectiveness of internal controls over time. For credit unions using voting software, this method: Survey & Ballot Systems Proves rigorous security protocols and confirms robust infrastructure, policies, and procedures against industry best practices.Demonstrates compliance with encryption, access controls, and data protection implementation and maintenance.Provides third-party audit evidence that supports vendor risk management documentation and due diligence requirements.Reduces liability through independent assurance of security posture, mitigating risk exposure in the event of a security issue.All of these factors provide assurance that the systems and processes used for elections are secure and reliable. It guarantees vote processing integrity and builds trust in the electoral process.Essential Security ArchitectureFor credit unions, voting compliance will also include adherence to official standards and best practices for systems security architecture. Ensure that any potential vendors have the following security measures in place. Survey & Ballot Systems Encryption StandardsRobust encryption standards are essential for securing sensitive voting data and credit union voting compliance. Consider the following:TLS 1.2+ for data in transit: All data exchanged between users, voting software, and backend systems must be protected using Transport Layer Security (TLS) version 1.2 or higher. This also includes vote submissions and administrative communications. Cryptographic protocols like this secure communications over networks, which prevents eavesdropping, tampering, and message forgery. Detailed guidance on these implementations can be found in the official standard, NIST SP 800-52r2.AES-256 for data at rest: AES-256 is a globally recognized secure symmetric-key encryption algorithm. This protects data from unauthorized access by scrambling it, even if storage media are compromised. This standard is defined by NIST FIPS 197 (AES Standard). Any stored voting data, including ballots, voter registries, audit trails held on servers, databases, and backup systems, must be encrypted with a 256-bit key.End-to-end encryption: Votes must be encrypted at the point of casting (on the voter’s device) to ensure robust security and privacy. This encryption must remain throughout every stage of transmission, storage, and processing. It can only be decrypted for secure tabulation. This ensures the confidentiality and integrity of individual votes through aggregation into final results.Bank-level security over commercial-grade: Bank-level security represents a higher standard of cybersecurity. It’s considered a robust cybersecurity option for credit unions that use critical systems, such as voting software. This level of security ensures regulatory compliance, advanced threat detection and prevention mechanisms, continuous auditing, and resilience against sophisticated attacks. Commercial-grade security protects general business operations. However, it lacks the specialized defenses and compliance frameworks required to protect sensitive electoral processes.Monitoring, Audit Trails, and LoggingSecure architecture for voting activity requires industry-leading security measures that provide:Real-time monitoring: This involves tallying votes as soon as ballots arrive or are submitted electronically. Real-time monitoring ensures trust by monitoring the live progress of voting activity.Audit trails: These continuously capture events as they occur, providing immediate visibility into system operations to detect unusual activity.Detailed logging: Comprehensive records help pinpoint which voting record accessed the voting platform, when, and what operations were performed.All of this supports full accountability and traceability when facilitating investigations.Authentication and De-DuplicationAuthentication and de-duplication measures ensure that only eligible members can cast a vote and that each member votes only once. This is achieved through:Multi-factor authentication: Security measures that require multiple forms of verification, such as a member ID, password, or single sign-on, reduce security risks.Duplicate-vote prevention: Mechanisms that detect and prevent members from casting more than one vote, whether attempted via paper ballot or online.Phone voting: Voters listen to prompts to vote for a candidate. Votes are recorded after selections are confirmed, and ballots are accessed by calling a specific number and entering specific details.These additional security measures maintain the integrity of the voting process.24/7 Monitoring and Incident ResponseThe voting system should be protected around the clock with the following response techniques:Real-time system monitoring: Automated tools to track performance and security during voting periods.Vulnerability and penetration testing: Regular simulated cyberattacks to identify potential weak points before they can be exploited.Incident response teams: A dedicated team on standby 24/7 to identify, contain, eradicate, and recover from any security breaches.Fast, efficient incident response plans keep the voting process uninterrupted and reliable.Evaluating VendorsWhen exploring vendor options, there are some other criteria to ensure complete peace of mind and safety. Look for the following additional areas of quality and compliance:A clear data-residency and storage location to ensure they’re U.S.-basedA clear and comprehensive disaster recovery and business continuity planTraining and support for credit union staff before, during, and after the electionMobile-friendly interface options and multi-channel voting capacitySecure voting compliance for credit unions should also consider accessibility requirements. This involves compliance with regulations like Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), including accessibility for web content and mobile apps.Credit Union Voting Compliance Red FlagsLook for the following warning signs that a vendor may not be qualified or compliant enough to support your voting needs:Delaying or being unable to show proof of SOC-2 certificationUsing encryption standards that fall short of modern needs (TLS 1.0 or WEP)Having no clear audit trail or logging processBeing unclear about data storage and international data transferOffering no dedicated support during the voting periodBeing inexperienced with the workings of NCUA-regulated electionsAny of these red flags should be considered proof that a vendor isn’t capable of helping you stay compliant and operate with integrity.Final Compliance ChecklistBefore making a final commitment to a vendor, use the information below as a final checklist as part of your decision:Are they SOC-2 Type II (current) compliant?Are they TLS 1.2+ and AES-256 encryption confirmed?Has the proof of audit trail capability been verified?Is member data security and GLBA compliance officially documented?There’s a lot to consider when looking for secure voting software that maintains compliance. Working with a reputable vendor that’s experienced in security and data protection under regulatory scrutiny can make the experience simpler and more streamlined.Keeping your voting members’ core needs in mind can be the ultimate roadmap to credit union election success. It also empowers credit unions to proceed without worrying about failed elections, data breaches, or irreparable reputational damage.This story was produced by Survey & Ballot Systems and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	The man who wasn’t there gets attacked anyway at Grow Smart gubernatorial forum Independent Ken Block speaks to the dozens of policy analysts and smart growth advocates in the audience for Grow Smart Rhode Island's gubernatorial candidate forum on Friday, June 26, 2026. Moderator Jim Hummel is on stage at left. (Photo by Michael Salerno/Rhode Island Current)Even in absentia, Gov. Dan McKee dominated discussion among his opponents during a gubernatorial forum hosted by Grow Smart Rhode Island Friday afternoon. McKee’s campaign told event organizers the governor could not attend the question-and-answer session during the public policy group’s annual Power of Place summit at the Rhode Island School of Design auditorium in downtown Providence because of a scheduling conflict. So there was no chance for the embattled 75-year-old incumbent, already behind in public polling and without his party’s endorsement, to rebut the criticisms from his challengers. Most of the jabs taken by Democrat Helena Buonanno Foulkes, Republican Aaron Guckian, and independent Ken Block were indirect, worked into responses to audience questions about housing, public transit and environmental concerns. “What’s been lacking is action and motion to achieve results,” Foulkes said, pledging to bring a more focused approach to the beleaguered Rhode Island Public Transit Authority. “We are done cutting RIPTA one year, and funding it the next, right before an election.” Her comments earned a burst of applause from the dozens of policy analysts and advocates in the audience, for whom RIPTA’s perennial lack of funding was a top concern. Seizing on the interest in a more robust public transit system, Block suggested making the bus service free for one year as an experiment to increase ridership, replacing the bus fare revenue that helps fund the quasi-public transit agency with other sources. “In a $15.2 billion budget, I can assure you we can find that $9 million,” said Block, earning even heartier applause from the audience. Like Foulkes, Block also took aim at McKee’s administration for a litany of management mistakes, from inefficient and wasteful spending to lack of infrastructure maintenance. Independent Ken Block said he would like to temporarily eliminate bus fares to see if it boosts ridership for the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority during a gubernatorial forum hosted by Grow Smart Rhode Island on Friday, June 26, 2026 at the Rhode Island School of Design. (Photo by Michael Salerno/Rhode Island Current) “We destroyed the Washington Bridge through neglect,” Block said. “Don’t let anybody tell you anything different.” Grow Smart sent out invites to candidates to participate in the forum on March 4, Scott Wolf, executive director said. McKee’s campaign manager notified organizers of the conflict on May 22, according to emails shared with Rhode Island Current. “Unfortunately the Governor will be unable to attend the forum, but if there is another opportunity to meet with the membership independently, we’d be interested in trying to schedule that,” Drew Shannon, McKee’s campaign manager, wrote in the RSVP email shared with Rhode Island Current. “Thank you for your continued follow up and I’m sorry this opportunity won’t work out on our end.” McKee’s campaign did not immediately respond to additional requests for comment on Monday. Crossing the topic of the Washington Bridge anyway Moderator Jim Hummel warned candidates at the outset that the Washington Bridge was off-limits. The forum was meant to focus on Grow Smart’s priorities like transit-oriented development and tax credits for historic preservation. But all three participants managed to work the westbound bridge into their remarks. “Right now we are in a whole firestorm of emergencies because of mismanagement,” Guckian said, referring to the westbound highway’s collapse and extended rebuild as one example. The ideological differences between the three gubernatorial challengers appeared minimal during the forum. Each pledged to restore more transparent and thoughtful leadership focused on the needs of everyday Rhode Islanders. Republican Aaron Guckian made frequent references to his union plumber father, who sat front row, during a gubernatorial forum hosted by Grow Smart Rhode Island on Friday, June 26, 2026 at the Rhode Island School of Design. (Photo by Michael Salerno/Rhode Island Current) Guckian repeatedly referenced lessons learned from his union plumber dad sitting in the front row for the event. “As Local 51 would say, ‘done once, done right,’” Guckian said, echoing the motto of the plumbers, pipefitters and HVAC workers union to which his dad belonged. Guckian, 49, of East Greenwich, has focused his platform around “compassionate conservatism,” eschewing more polarizing Republican talking points to concentrate on affordability concerns and government spending. Yet his answers to certain questions rang more Republican. Asked by an audience member about his willingness to raise taxes, the GOP endorsed candidate instead returned to outsized state spending. “We’re so bloated right now, I think we could quickly find the money,” he said. But, he conceded, “If a tax is going to an appropriate place, and it’s an emergency, then yes, I can see it.” Foulkes, who lost to McKee by 3 percentage points in the 2022 gubernatorial Democratic primary, also could not be pinned down when pressed for definitive answers. Hummel asked her whether she supports restarting the state’s truck toll program, which will cost more than $20 million to relaunch thanks to equipment upgrades, and risks alienating businesses that rely on commercial truckers. Foulkes replied, “We’ll have to see. I don’t know yet.” Foulkes, 61, of Providence, was also unsure when queried about revising Rhode Island’s affordable housing law, which since 2004 has set income parameters for affordable units at up to 120% of area median income. Annette Bourne, research and policy director for HousingWorks RI, said the income limits were too high — $107,640 for one person or $170,160 for a family of four — which means housing defined as affordable remains out of reach for the lowest income and most vulnerable residents. Rewriting the law to cap income for affordable housing at 80% or 100% of area median income could help, Bourne suggested. Foulke said she was “open” to the idea, but did not commit. ‘We are done cutting RIPTA one year, and funding it the next, right before an election,’ Democrat Helena Foulkes says at Grow Smart RI’s 2026 Power of Place Summit Gubernatorial Forum on Friday, June 26, 2026 at the Rhode Island School of Design. (Photo by Michael Salerno/Rhode Island Current) In search of solutions Yet Foulkes was not without ideas for solving the housing crisis, which include a state revolving fund for housing development funded by a millionaire’s tax. The fiscal 2027 budget also includes an extra 3% tax on income over $1 million starting Jan. 1, but does not earmark the revenue for a specific purpose. Reciting statistics from a recent analysis by the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council highlighting the low return-on-investment from state housing investments, Foulkes called for an overhaul of housing strategy. “What we’re doing isn’t working,” she said, naming designated funds for rent relief and eviction protection, along with a push for modular housing manufactured in Rhode Island as potential solutions. Block, a two-time gubernatorial candidate who has run as a Republican and a moderate, also came to the table with a vision. In addition to a pilot free-fare program for RIPTA, the 60-year-old Barrington resident backed consolidation of the state Rhode Island Department of Transportation and the Rhode Island Turnpike and Bridge Authority as a means to improve government efficiency and function. “I am an expert in finding waste and fraud,” said Block, a software engineer who was hired by the Trump campaign to investigate fraud in the 2020 election — which Block ultimately disproved. But, Block said, expertise was not needed to conclude that the state was not spending its money well, naming the recent state payroll debacle resulting from a $100 million software upgrade as one example. Asked by Hummel about the state’s long-term proposal to improve transit through a light rail system connecting the state’s urban core, Block was unsure whether it was a worthwhile investment. He said he needed more information about cost and potential ridership. He was similarly hazy on increasing RIPTA routes. “Too many times, we do things, and they don’t work, and we’re left with a mess,” Block said. Candidates also touched on education, healthcare, environmental issues and food insecurity during their remarks. The primary is Wednesday, Sept. 9, with a Nov. 3 general election. Early voting begins Aug. 20. Margherita Pryor of Providence asks a question to Republican gubernatorial candidate Aaron Guckian during the Grow Smart RI Power of Place event on Friday, June 26, 2026. (Photo by Michael Salerno/Rhode Island Current) SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX. Courtesy of Rhode Island Current
	Why FBI Director Kash Patel is in Iowa on Monday FBI Director Kash Patel is scheduled to be in Iowa on Monday to meet with law enforcement.
	Rock Island Arsenal testing cannons this week The Rock Island Arsenal is testing its cannons ahead of a welcome ceremony later this week. The Arsenal will test the cannons on Monday and Tuesday, June 29 and 30 for the welcome ceremony in honor of Maj. Gen. Eric Riley, First Army Deputy Commander for Operations. The cannons will be fired for the rehearsal [...]
	AI could help fix healthcare's burnout crisis. Will hospitals let it? AI could help fix healthcare's burnout crisis. Will hospitals let it?Healthcare has spent decades acquiring more capability and asking clinicians to carry more of the load that comes with it. More technology and more administrative complexity has been layered onto the same working hours.The average physician now spends more time on documentation than on patients. Decades of new technology promised to change that. Mostly, it added more to do.AI is different, at least in theory.Physicians are warming up to AI faster than almost any other profession. Nearly three in four now say they're comfortable using it, up from fewer than half just a year ago, according to the Qualtrics 2026 Healthcare Trends Report.But comfort with a tool and confidence in the people deploying it are different things. Only 39% of healthcare workers say they trust their organization's AI strategy. As Qualtrics outlines below, this large gap reveals something the adoption numbers alone don't: doctors are ready, and many aren't sure their health systems are.One burden AI could lift for physiciansOne in three healthcare workers reports experiencing burnout. That figure has barely moved in years, despite enormous investment in wellbeing programs and workforce initiatives. The reason is because most of those investments treat burnout as an individual problem, when it isn't.The most common drivers are systemic, including unmanageable workloads, limited response to feedback, and most concerning, cultures wherein raising concerns feels unsafe. Documentation is a well-known, pervasive drain. Clinicians spend hours each day on administrative tasks that take time away from patients. That cost is borne not just by clinicians, but by patients, and their families, who don’t get the attention they need.This is where AI has generated real interest. For the first time, there's a technology that could actually remove work rather than adding to it. That's a different kind of promise than healthcare has seen before. Technologies like AI-generated patient portal messages and discharge summaries, and ambient listening, offer a glimpse of what that relief could look like.But potential and progress are not the same thing. Some ambient listening research, in the form of a listening app on a phone or computer, indicates it saves clinicians time and improves patient experience. In reality, it also suggests billing codes and breaks patients down into a list of their problems. This approach confuses the intent of the tool (save documentation time versus bill as much as possible) and also leads away from whole person care and into problem based care. Sometimes the AI generated messages lack context and ask the patient to call in anyway. That just creates more work for everyone. If the tools being offered through the organization don’t deliver real value to clinicians — or their patients — they simply won’t use them.What thoughtful AI implementation looks likeWhat makes AI different from other technology, and more consequential, is scale. When AI works well, the benefits compound across thousands of patient interactions. When it doesn't, so do the failures.Some health systems are getting this right. The distinguishing factor among the healthcare organizations that get this right is how they scope the problem.Community Health Network, an Indianapolis-based system, is one example. Rather than rolling out AI broadly and measuring adoption, their teams identified specific friction points in care delivery: patients with unresolved questions after a visit, gaps in primary care connection, understanding volumes of employee experience data, and delays in routing patient needs to the right teams. AI was aimed at those specific problems.The results are concrete. Automated, conversational outreach closed loops after visits to explore unresolved needs. Patients who weren't connected to primary care received targeted follow-up, leading thousands to seek additional care. This translated immediately to appropriate access and growth. AI was also used to extend the reach of clinical teams in places where human capacity had run out.The same pattern holds outside healthcare. TruGreen, the largest U.S. lawn care company, assumed their price was driving customers away. But the only channel they based this on was surveys — about 300K of them annually. Listening across channels expanded voices to 500M and revealed the real driver was trust: customers didn't believe the service was being delivered as promised. The company deployed AI agents to spot at-risk customers and resolve issues in real time, handling 51% of concerns automatically in the first week.AI is most useful when there is a clear experience gap; it connects data to action, and fits naturally into existing workflows.Culture matters as much as technologyOne of the strongest predictors of whether AI will succeed in a healthcare setting has little to do with the tool itself, and more to do with the culture around it.Based on Qualtrics research, clinicians are more likely to engage with new tools like AI when they feel safe speaking up, testing new ideas, and challenging what isn’t working. The single strongest factor of AI readiness isn't budget or technology infrastructure. It's whether a clinician's direct leader rewards risk-taking. Communication quality, trust in senior leadership, and the freedom to try new things follow.Safety in healthcare is broader than clinical outcomes alone; it includes both psychological safety, the ability to raise concerns without fear, and physical safety. What we didn’t realize was that psychological safety has a profound impact on whether clinicians take risks with new tools. It makes sense: When it isn’t safe to be wrong, fear wins, no risks are taken, and creativity dies.Right now, around half of healthcare workers globally say they feel psychologically safe at work. That is a crisis that predates AI and will outlast it. But it has direct bearing on whether AI implementations succeed or fail.If organizations want AI to improve care, they have to create the conditions for honest engagement with it. That means involving clinicians and patients in design decisions, rather than assuming it will create value. It means defining measurable outcomes before deployment, not after. And it means treating negative feedback as data to refine the process or the tool, not resistance to using them.Clinicians are ready to engage with AI. What they're waiting for is an organization that makes it safe and meaningful to do so.Patients are not waiting eitherMany patients will never think about whether their health system uses AI. They'll notice whether the appointment was easy to get, whether they had to repeat their history, whether follow-up came when it was supposed to, and whether their clinician brought their full presence into the room or just their physical body. These are the real metrics.But they are not waiting for organizations to deliver solutions either. They are turning, by the tens of millions, to ChatGPT and other tools to get timely guidance and information on health questions, and in some cases, for ongoing care.Some patients decline ambient listening. They want to protect the sacredness of the doctor-patient relationship. Others will give away consent easily if told it helps their clinician. Some organizations treat informed consent for AI tools as a sign on the wall or a step in the appointment registration, instead of a conversational process.These shifts are behavioral signals that organizations are not meeting the expectations of patients. And many of the tools they are turning to have not met the bar for being worthy of their trust either.The question was never whether physicians would accept AI. As the Qualtrics report shows, the majority have, faster than almost anyone predicted. The harder question is whether health systems can build the trust, with their own clinicians and patients, to deploy it in ways that actually make care better. Right now, the evidence is mixed. And patients, increasingly, aren't waiting around to find out.This story was produced by Qualtrics and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Your parking lot’s reservation problem is actually a relationship problem Your parking lot’s reservation problem is actually a relationship problemYou’ve done all the right things: You listed your lot with the best parking reservation apps, redesigned your signs so they really pop, and retrained your staff. And still, that “Parking Lot Full” sign lies gathering dust in the corner (except maybe during the holidays or a big game day). If this sounds familiar, here’s an aspect most parking operators don’t really consider. Your parking lot’s reservation problem? It’s really a relationship problem. Way.com dove into why this happens and what you can do to fix it.If your customer relationship status seems permanently set to “It’s complicated,” you’re probably not going to see sold-outs, except maybe during peak seasons.Each new customer you acquire through paid ads or flyers comes with a cost. Retaining the ones you have is much less expensive, and retaining a customer who feels genuinely connected to your parking lot is worth so much more than a dozen one-time parkers who never gave you a second thought after they drove away. Operators who’ve figured this out are no longer asking, “How do I get more reservations?” They’re now wondering, “How do I give my customers a reason to come back again and again?”What your customers actually expect from youYour customer isn’t thinking about your lot the way you do. You might think in terms of capacity, throughput, and occupancy rates. For them, it’s more about whether the experience matched what they were promised, and if it didn’t, did anyone seem to care? That’s why when a customer books a spot, and something goes wrong, it often feels like a betrayal to them. A customer who trusts you to keep their car safe wants reassurance that you’re looking out for them. They want to know that picking you over the other lot across the street comes with tangible upsides.For a lot of parking lot operators, this might seem like a different bar from what they usually set for themselves. However, this is also a much less crowded space to compete in.When a customer feels like a valued member rather than a meter, everything changes. They’re way less sensitive about prices and a lot more forgiving of slipups. They’re also more likely to tell others about you, and most importantly, they keep coming back without having to be reminded.What’s going wrong with your customer relationship?As with most relationships that go south, it helps to know where things are going wrong. Here are three points of friction.Before the customer parks: Unclear pricing, vague or confusing policies, and a bumpy booking experience all affect the relationship even before it starts. Customers who experience any or all of these are already halfway out the door.When something goes wrong: When an issue occurs (getting turned away at the lot, a payment issue, or miscommunication with the attendant), what the response was, and how it was resolved matter a lot more than the issue itself. A customer who feels heard is a very different customer from one who got handed a refund and a shrug.After they leave the lot: This is the most overlooked, yet the most important aspect. What happens after your customer drives out of the lot? In most cases, the answer is nothing. They leave, and that’s pretty much the end of it until the next time they park. That period of silence is where most lots lose repeat customers. The case for keeping the relationship goingParking operators who are building a loyal customer base aren’t just trying to provide good customer experiences; they are trying to find ways to engage with their customers between parking reservations.What this could look like is a driver who gets gas cash-back every time they fill up and starts associating your lot with something that helps with their monthly budget. It could also look like a driver who got a jump start on a particularly bad morning and remembers you when they look for parking. It could be someone who got $300 toward a cracked windshield that they couldn’t have afforded to get fixed.All of these drivers now consider you their go-to lot, not because of the location but because of what the relationship means to them. And just like that, you’ve gone from being a parking transaction to a place to keep returning to.How a membership program can be just what you needThe ideal solution to this problem is to build a member benefit ecosystem that keeps customer relationships alive and meaningful beyond the transaction itself. Here’s how it would work:Free car washes and discounts on car washes mean members always have a clean car without spending too much.Parking credits every month reduce their monthly spend.Gas cash-back on every fill-up adds up to a tidy sum in a year.Roadside assistance when they need it the most, including towing and an Uber option.A mechanic’s hotline is available for when there’s car trouble, and they don’t know what to do.Glass breakage protection so a cracked windshield doesn’t burn a hole in their pocket.Layoff protection so they know you have their back.For parking operators, the value is clear. A customer who has access to benefits that are part of their daily life has a reason to keep coming back to you. It doesn’t matter to them whether your lot is the most convenient option on a given day. You stay top of mind, and you’re not just competing on location anymore, but on relationships.The bottom lineNo fancy billboard or signage is going to fix a trust deficit. The reservation problem? It’s just a symptom. The relationship problem is the one that needs fixing.The good news is that the path from transaction to relationship doesn’t require any staff retraining or complex tech integration from your side. All you need to do is give your customers a reason to remember you between visits.That “Parking Lot Full” sign mentioned at the start of this article? It deserves to come out of the corner more than a couple of times a year. The customers who can make that happen aren’t the ones hunting for the best discounts; they’re the ones looking for the best relationship they can find. Now you can give them one.This story was produced by Way.com and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Clearing the Air For the Next School Year (NAPSI)—While many parents may breathe a sigh of relief when school reopens in the fall, they may also be glad to know schools can take steps to support cleaner indoor air, including HVAC system inspection and cleaning as part of summer maintenance.What’s Up With DuctsDucts get dirty. Even with the proper use of filters, the school’s heating and cooling system can get really dirty through normal school day use, just as surfaces in your home get dirty and dusty over time and have to be cleaned.All sorts of contaminants and air pollutants are common in schools, including bacteria, dust, skin cells, mold, and chemicals. And when all those contaminants get pulled into an HVAC system, they travel through the air ducts, and recirculate through the building multiple times a day. Throughout the school year, all that recirculation can cause a major build-up of contaminants in the ductwork and other system components. Unfortunately, many schools are in buildings over 50 years old and operate at just 1 or 2 air changes per hour, which is well below recommended levels. The Centers for Disease Control and professional architectural engineering societies have issued new recommendations for minimum air exchange rates for educational settings.Meanwhile, rodents and insects can take up residence in ductwork by chewing their way in or finding an unsealed access route. Once they move in, they make nests and leave droppings, contaminating the quality of the air students and teachers breathe.All this can cause major health issues, especially for those with respiratory conditions, auto-immune disorders, asthma, or allergies. In fact, according to the EPA, poor indoor air quality can increase the risk of developing pneumonia and other upper respiratory problems. And all those indoor air pollutants can lead to irritated eyes, nose, and throat, as well as headaches, dizziness, and fatigue which can keep kids from concentrating on their lessons.What’s more, experts say poor indoor air quality in schools has been associated with absenteeism, respiratory symptoms, and challenges with concentration and learning.On the other hand, improved ventilation, filtration, and HVAC maintenance can help reduce airborne contaminants and support healthier indoor environments.In fact, recent research in occupied public schools found reductions in fine and coarse particulate matter following systematic HVAC system cleaning, reinforcing the importance of including HVAC systems in school indoor air quality planning.What Can Be DoneFor many school districts, part of the answer can include working with NADCA member companies. For decades, NADCA has led the effort to ensure that the systems delivering air into buildings remain clean, efficient, and healthy. NADCA member companies have technicians with advanced training and certification in HVAC system cleaning, and they’re required to follow higher standards, ensuring that contaminants are removed at the source.What You Can DoParents can ask their school or district whether HVAC system inspection and cleaning are part of the summer maintenance plan. Learn MoreFor further facts including how NADCA can help a school near you, visit www.nadca.com.Word Count: 485
	Cannons to fire on Arsenal Island Expect to hear ceremonial cannon fire from the Rock Island Arsenal this week as the base hosts a welcome ceremony for Major General Eric Riley.
	Supreme Court cements Trump's power over agencies long considered independent In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court struck down a 91-year-old precedent that has prevented presidents from removing members of independent agencies meant to be a check on his power.
	The financial wake-up call most people in their 30s aren't getting The financial wake-up call most people in their 30s aren't gettingThere’s no sugarcoating it. If you don’t have a strong financial foundation in your 30s, you’re in for a lifetime of difficulty. But don’t worry — even if you feel behind right now, there’s plenty of time to catch up.CreditNinja breaks down the realistic money milestones to hit in your 30s and where the average 30-year-old actually stands right now.Key TakeawaysMoney milestones for your 30s center on building a positive net worth and strong credit by moving out of survival mode, reducing debt, and ensuring your net worth and credit score are trending upward year over year.Eliminating bad debt, such as credit cards and buy-now-pay-later balances, is critical, while responsibly managing good debt helps free up cash for saving, investing, and future goals.A true emergency fund of three to six months of expenses is essential to avoid financial derailment from unexpected events and reduce reliance on high-risk borrowing.Retirement investing should accelerate in your 30s by consistently contributing to tax-advantaged accounts, taking advantage of employer matches when available, and using compound growth to build long-term wealth.Money Milestone #1: Build Positive Net Worth and a Strong Credit ScoreThe first milestone is building a positive net worth and building a strong credit score. The average credit score for a person in their 20s is 662. That’s because in your 20s, you’re starting to build your credit, and it may take some time to gain traction.Now that you’re in your 30s, you may have a 10-year credit history, more lines of credit, and more types of credit, like a car loan, or if you’re lucky, a mortgage, but it’s still surprising that the average credit score for people in their 30s is 672.Ideally, you’re making your way to the 700s in your 30s. So, when you need to buy a house, you can get a better interest rate.People in their 30s have an average net worth of about $300,000, while the median is just $35,000. The median provides a better picture of the typical American because those really high earners skew the average up. So don’t worry if you’re not in the six-figure range, but the gap between the median and average net worth does show us two things:First, a handful of people are doing really well and pushing the average up.Second, tons of people are still far below average. How many of your friends have a multiple six-figure net worth right now?The important thing here is that you’re moving past the just-surviving phase of your life and starting to build your net worth, whether it’s through a home, a retirement account, or paying off debt.When you’re in your early 30s, your net worth might still be low or even negative thanks to student loans, car loans, and credit cards. But by mid-30s, you should be seeing that number move in the positive direction. So, if you’re at 30 and your net worth is flat or shrinking, it’s a red flag that tells you something needs to change, it’s a sign that debt, spending, or lack of income growth is dragging you down.Look back at your net worth and credit score from last year. Did it go up? Great! If not, find the cause and set a goal to fix it. Whether it’s increasing your contributions to your retirement accounts, increasing your income, or paying off debt to get that credit score up.Money Milestone #2: Get Rid of Bad DebtThe second financial milestone is to get rid of your bad debt. And that is the keyword here, bad debt. Bad debt is something like credit card debt or buy now pay later debt that drags down your credit score instead of building it. On the other hand, there is good debt, such as home loans or student loans. These are considered good because they can actually help you build your credit score if you pay on time and help you save and make money in the long run.People between 30 and 39 carry an average student loan debt balance of about $42,000, about $6,900 of credit card debt, and roughly $84,000 of mortgages and other debt.Now, in your 20s, debt is usually chaotic because you have every form of debt that eats away at your paycheck the second it hits your bank account. It’s like a pack of sharks, right? The money comes in and then it’s going to student loans, car loans, credit cards, and rent before you even blink. And you have almost no money as you’re just starting out in your career.But in your 30s, you essentially want all of your bad debt off the books so that you can put it towards things like savings, retirement, or the house that you want to own.This means paying your credit card balance in full each month, and paying all of your loans and balances on time. Every late payment decreases your credit score.The goal isn’t to be debt-free in your 30s because, for most people, that isn’t realistic. If you can pay off your home in your 30s, congrats, because that would put you in the top 10% of 30-year-olds who do pay off their home.But holding good debt isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You just need to pay on time and prove you’re a trusted borrower. Now, if you’re still mostly paying minimums on credit cards or you’re spending more than you bring in, then you’re going in the wrong direction.Carrying bad debt is essentially going to hold you back financially for as long as you have it. So, the sooner it’s gone, the better.Money Milestone #3: Build an Emergency FundAnd for the third financial milestone, you should have an actual emergency fund.There’s nothing anything exciting about grinding away at work to watch the numbers on your banking app go up, but the art of saving money is lost, and it’s creating a major problem. The median savings for those under 35 is $5,400 and the average saving balance is $20,000. And for those between 35 and 45, the median is $7,500 and the average savings is $41,000.But if you want a real emergency fund, it’s recommended by finance pros to have three to six months of monthly expenses. And based on the median numbers, most aren’t hitting our targets. The median ranges from $5,400 to $7,500, which means monthly expenses would have to be $1,800 to $2,500 to maintain at least a three-month cushion. If you don’t yet have that fund, you’re vulnerable and a single unexpected event could derail your financial momentum.By the way, if an emergency does happen and you don’t have your emergency fund yet, please do not ever resort to a payday loan. They’re predatory loans that trap people in debt.As with homes, many people in their 20s and 30s would save for a home because it felt affordable. Now that homes have gone up in price, some people might think they won’t ever be able to afford a home, so they don’t see the point in saving for one. Instead, they’re spending and wasting money on things that they don’t need, like ordering from DoorDash every night instead of cooking and saving for a strong financial future. There are people out there financing burritos on DoorDash now. It’s too much. It’s important to get real with yourself. If you don’t have an emergency fund yet, focus on cutting unnecessary spending. Make this a top priority after paying down bad debt. Because if you don’t, you’re one emergency away from drowning in debt for the rest of your life.Money Milestone #4: Build Your Retirement and Investment AccountsThe fourth financial milestone is building your retirement and investment accounts. Americans in their 30s have average retirement balances of about 249,000 with a median of about 91,000. You should start adding to your retirement account in your 20s. But the 30s are where things should really kick into gear.Now, if you haven’t started saving for retirement yet, the best time to start saving was 10 years ago. But the next best time is now. You really can’t afford to wait.If your employer sponsors a 401(k), contribute every month. See if you have the option to set it up so that it auto-drafts from your paycheck, so you don’t even need to think about it. Many employers do a 401(k) match, in which they match a certain percentage of what you invest. That’s free money!Anyone can open up a Roth IRA, where you can contribute up to 7500 a year and it grows tax-free. Now, if your employer doesn’t sponsor a 401(k), you can still open up your own IRA instead. The reason this is so important is that inside these retirement accounts, you can make your money make more money. By investing in stock market ETFs that grow month by month, year-by-year, your $10,000 today can become $100,000 in 30 years if the ETFs grow at an average of 8% a year. This is thanks to compound interest.With the big stock funds like those that track the S&P 500, the general growth is 8% a year. Now, some years the market can go down a bunch or it can go up 20%. So when we look at this compound growth curve, the earlier you start, the faster things take off. If you’re behind now, you can catch up by being more aggressive and putting your extra cash towards retirement.After you’ve built your emergency fund, if you have leftover cash every month, maybe you want to contribute more. But no matter what, if you want to maximize the money you have for retirement, it’s crucial to start ASAP.Money Milestone #5: Real Estate and Housing PlanningThe fifth milestone is the one that almost everyone dreads, and that’s making a decision on what you want to do with buying a home. For a lot of people, the 30s often come with major life transitions. Buying a home, maybe kids. These are exciting things, but without preparation, major life transitions can quickly kill your savings and debt reduction goals. Here are some data points that you need to know:The median home price in the U.S. recently hovers around $415,000, though this varies heavily by region.The median age of a first-time home buyer is currently 40 years old. This is wild when you consider that in 2020, the median was 33 years old.This is in large part because of what happened during COVID-19. Interest rates went low. Everyone tried to get a home, which pushed the prices up and then interest rates rose and some prices stayed the same.If we look at a real example, we can take the median home and current interest rate and plug it into a calculator. Assuming we confront the $80,000 down payment, our mortgage would be around $2,400 a month. If you’re living with somebody, this could be doable. But if you’re single, you have to be making some serious money to afford it. Experts say your mortgage shouldn’t be more than one-third of your salary, so you’d need to be making six figures solo or together with your partner. When you’re buying a home, the more you can put down in your down payment, the less you have to pay each month, and the less interest you’ll have to pay over the long term for a home.Some tips to help make buying a home more affordable include:Contribute money to a high-yield savings account each month for a future down payment so that the money can grow with interest.Put money into 6-month or 12-month CDs, which may give you a bit more interest. This ensures that you don’t spend this money and that it’s earning more interest while you’re waiting to buy a house.Life seems to get really serious in your 30s, and it’s true. Saving, not wasting money, paying the rest of our student loans, always paying the balance on credit cards on time, and only upgrading when you have to and when you can afford it. If you want to own a home, you have to be intentional with your plan. This story was produced by CreditNinja and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	5 of the most cursed teams in sports history 5 of the most cursed teams in sports historyHistoric collapses. Heartbreaking last-minute losses. Failed dynasties. Tortured fanbases. The factors surrounding “cursed” teams are plentiful. Such “curses” are the ultimate hate/love combo. Some fans relish the opportunity to emerge from a perceived curse while also enjoying the wallowing that comes with said curse.Of course, not all curses are created equal. Some rise above the rest to achieve true legend status. That’s what we’re discussing today. Below, Bodog lists five cursed teams that have a real case to make for their woes.1. The Buffalo BillsIt feels a bit odd to put the Buffalo Bills on this list, especially considering their recent winning seasons with Josh Allen behind center. But ask any long-time Bills fan, and they’ll understand,The Bills are the only franchise in NFL history to lose four consecutive Super Bowls (1991-94). One of those losses was thanks to Scott Norwood’s now-infamous “wide right” field goal attempt in Super Bowl XXV against the Giants. The Bills lost 20-19.A few years later, the Music City Miracle in the 2000 NFL Wild Card game ended the Bills’ season, on a play some still argue is illegal. From 2001 to 2017, the Bills suffered a playoff drought. They’ve been going through it, and their recent playoff hopes have also been dashed.2. The Pre-2016 Chicago CubsThe Chicago Cubs might be the most famous cursed team of all time. The team endured more than a century without a World Series win, from 1908 to 2016.There’s even some curse-related lore. In 1945, Billy Sianis was ejected from a World Series game at Wrigley Field for bringing his goat along. He allegedly cursed the franchise on his way out, solidifying the already-in-progress losing streak.The Cubs’ woes continued into the new millennium. During Game 6 of the NLCS in 2003, the Cubs led 3-2 and were up by three runs in the eighth inning. Steve Bartman interfered with a foul ball from his seat, and the Cubs ended up giving up eight runs. They lost the game and the subsequent meeting, giving up the series.The Cubs curse spanned two World Wars, the moon landing, and Watergate. The Cubs’ drought started when silent movies were the top form of entertainment and ended in the streaming era.3. The Cleveland BrownsYou know you've had some famously bad luck when you have to capitalize otherwise mundane terms to identify your curse. The Cleveland Browns have both “The Drive” and “The Fumble” to contend with. Say either one near a diehard fan, and that curse will come to mind.“The Drive” points to the 1986 AFC Championship. NFL legend John Elway marched the Broncos down the field, traveling 98 yards in 15 plays in the final minutes of regulation. He would score to tie the game, then Denver won in overtime. Devastation.A year later, “The Fumble” reared its head in the AFC Championship game. Sports fans everywhere watched as the Browns’ Earnest Byner fumbled the ball at the 3-yard line in an attempt to tie the game against the Denver Broncos.Relocation woes followed. In 1996, Art Modell relocated the Browns to Baltimore, where the team became the Ravens, who would win the Super Bowl in 2001. The Browns returned as an expansion team in 1999 and enjoyed the distinction of being among the worst franchises in football history. To cap it all off, the Browns went 0-16 in 2017; they’re one of only two NFL teams to hold that dishonor.4. The Minnesota VikingsThe curse of the Minnesota Vikings has many different ingredients, each with its own flavor. Things start simply with four Super Bowl losses: 1970, 1974, 1975, and 1977.In the 1999 NFC Championship, the team was banking on its field goal prowess. Gary Anderson went 35/35 on field goal attempts all season. He missed a crucial kick, and the Falcons rallied to win the game.More kicking disaster came years later in 2016, when Blair Walsh missed a 27-yarder in the NFC Wild Card.Two years later, a Stefon Diggs walk-off TD won the Vikings a thrilling divisional playoff game against the Saints. However, the Vikes would get demolished by Philadelphia 38-7 the next week in the NFC Championship Game, missing out on a chance to play the Super Bowl in their home stadium.The Vikings are a far cry from the longtime curses held by other teams (like the Cubs). Instead, they have incremental cursed moments that add up to franchise-wide trauma.5. The Toronto Maple LeafsThe Maple Leafs last won the Stanley Cup in 1967, the year before the NHL expanded beyond six teams. Their drought remains the largest of any of the six original franchises.Notable losses for the Maple Leafs include a 2013 Game 7 collapse against the Bruins in the first round of the NHL playoffs. The Leafs led 4-1 with only 10 minutes to play. They blew the lead and lost in overtime.The Game 7 slump has carried into other playoff games for the Leafs, including similar first round losses to the Bruins (again, in 2024) and the Lightning in 2022. They’re competitive enough to raise hopes for Canadians, then they dash them.Why Fans Love 'Cursed Team' NarrativesShared winning is obviously a joyous feeling. But shared losing? That forges some strong bonds as well. It’s hard to imagine a time when an entire fanbase was happier than in 2016 when the Cubs won the World Series. Overcoming a years — or decades — long curse is the ultimate payoff for sports fans.There’s also the fun mythology angle. It can be more interesting to craft lore around a drought than to find actual reasoning. “We’re cursed” sounds a lot better than “We’ve made terrible front office decisions for 40 years.”While the losses are tough and tougher as they accumulate, they also create cool touchpoints in sports history. Without some of these curses, sports fans wouldn’t have the Billy Goat fable or “The Drive.”This story was produced by Bodog and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Arconic eagles nest falls Arconic Eagle Cam officials says the branch supporting the eagles nest broke causing the nest to fall.
	How you can protect your AC unit during extreme heat With heat indexes up to 110 degrees, local experts share vital tips to keep your air conditioner running smoothly and lower your electric bills.
	Resident and dog escape Coal Valley house fire safely on Sunday evening A resident and their dog safely escaped a house fire Sunday on South Shore Drive in Coal Valley. Fire crews contained the damage to a single room.
	The Supreme Court upholds grace periods for mail-in ballots, siding against the GOP The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a Mississippi law that allows election officials to count mail-in ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but received up to five days after it.
	5 home projects to complete this summer 5 home projects to complete this summerSummer is here, and the time is right for major home renovations, thanks to longer daylight hours, lower humidity, and more predictable weather conditions. Timing your home reno projects strategically and taking advantage of the upsides of summertime can improve installation quality, reduce delays, and potentially increase your return on investment over time.Certain thoughtful upgrades, especially energy efficiency improvements, exterior repairs, and curb appeal projects, can help improve the everyday comfort of your home while also supporting long-term property value. In this piece, Splitero highlights the top home renovations to tackle this summer, which projects are better saved for fall, and how homeowners can plan and fund renovations more confidently.Key TakeawaysSummer is the best season for exterior, structural, and outdoor renovation work because warm, dry weather helps materials cure and install properly.Energy-efficiency upgrades like new windows, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, and attic insulation may help reduce long-term utility costs if installed in early summer, before the hottest part of the year.Outdoor improvements such as patios, decks, and landscaping can improve curb appeal and extend usable living space – and they’re more comfortable to work on at the beginning of the season.Some projects, including interior painting and hardwood floor refinishing, are often better completed during the drier conditions of fall.Having a renovation funding plan in place before starting can help homeowners avoid delays or unfinished projects.1. Replace old or drafty windowsOlder windows can quietly drive up heating and cooling costs, especially during periods of extreme weather. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, heat gain and heat loss through windows are responsible for up to 30% of residential heating and cooling energy use.Visible drafts, condensation between panes, rising utility bills, and windows that stick when opening or closing are all common signs it may be time for replacement.Summer is one of the best times to install new windows because warm, stable temperatures help sealants adhere properly and reduce the risk of weather delays. Many homeowners choose Energy Star-certified windows because they meet federal energy-efficiency performance standards for insulation and climate control, and are associated with lower heating and cooling costs.For homeowners thinking about long-term value, window replacement is frequently included among the home renovations with the best return on investment, thanks to its combination of energy savings and curb appeal improvements.2. Tackle roofing repairs or replacementRoofing projects are very weather-dependent, making summer one of the busiest seasons for roof repairs and replacements. The drier conditions in summer help roofing materials seal correctly while minimizing project interruptions caused by rain or moisture exposure.“Consistent weather and longer days make the projects much more efficient and predictable,” said Mike Feazel, CEO of Roof Maxx, noting that summer’s longer days and more predictable weather patterns help exterior projects move more efficiently with fewer weather-related delays.According to the International Association of Certified Home Inspectors, asphalt shingle roofs typically last between 15 and 30 years, depending on climate and maintenance. Delaying repairs can increase the likelihood of leaks, mold growth, and water damage that may become significantly more expensive over time.For homeowners thinking about resale, Jeff Lichtenstein, CEO of Echo Fine Properties, warns that older roofs can become a concern for both buyers and mortgage lenders, making replacement a worthwhile investment before listing a home.This all said, extreme heat can make shingles more vulnerable during installation, so many contractors recommend scheduling work during early summer or cooler stretches when possible.3. Upgrade your HVAC systemIf your HVAC system struggles to maintain temperatures, requires frequent repairs, or causes energy bills to spike, summer may be the ideal time to consider an upgrade.According to Stan Pakarin, CEO of Fuse Service, many HVAC systems begin costing more to maintain than to replace once homeowners experience recurring repairs and declining performance. He explained that the prospect of expensive repairs on systems nearing 12 to 15 years old is often better viewed as an opportunity to consider newer, more energy-efficient equipment instead of a temporary fix for aging systems.It’s also worthwhile to consider upgrading your HVAC system before the hottest part of the summer season; replacing an aging system before peak demand periods may also make it easier to secure contractor availability and avoid emergency breakdowns during heat waves. Installing a new system during summer also allows homeowners to test performance under real-world conditions before colder temperatures arrive later in the year.4. Improve or add outdoor living spaceOutdoor living upgrades continue to rank among the most popular home improvement projects, particularly during warmer months when homeowners spend more time outside. Patios, decks, pergolas, and covered seating areas can help extend functional living space while improving curb appeal.Summer is especially well-suited for these projects because dry ground conditions allow for easier excavation, concrete curing, staining, and construction work. Homeowners may also immediately enjoy the added space for entertaining or outdoor dining during the warmer months.“Too much heat, humidity, or rain can create problems with everything from paint adhesion to roofing installation and concrete curing,” explained Marcus Cuevas, franchise owner at Varsity Zone. As a result, many homeowners choose to sit out the spring season for certain exterior renovation projects due to frequent rain and inconsistent weather conditions.5. Seal and insulate your atticAttic sealing and insulation upgrades are often overlooked, but they can have a significant impact on both comfort and energy efficiency.The EPA’s Energy Star program estimates homeowners can save an average of 10% on heating and cooling costs by properly sealing and insulating their homes. Because attics are a major source of air leakage, addressing insulation gaps can help reduce the strain on HVAC systems during peak summer temperatures.Summer also gives contractors safer and more consistent access to attic spaces before colder weather arrives. You may notice indoor comfort improvements almost immediately after the project is completed.Projects to save for fallWhile summer is ideal for many exterior renovations, some indoor projects are best saved until temperatures cool and humidity levels drop. Interior painting, for example, can benefit from fall’s drier conditions, which may help paint dry more evenly and reduce issues like bubbling, streaking, or prolonged curing times. Hardwood floor refinishing is another project many home professionals prefer to tackle in the fall, since excess summer humidity can cause wood planks to expand and affect how stains and finishes cure.Fall can also be a practical time to schedule larger interior remodels. “Heavy indoor construction projects, including but not limited to full kitchen and bath remodels, would be best started after Labor Day,” said Mike Roberts, co-founder and president of City Creek Mortgage. He added that waiting until fall can mean better contractor availability and less disruption to summer vacations and recreational plans.How to fund summer renovationsHome renovation costs can add up quickly, especially when tackling multiple projects at once. Some homeowners choose to pay with savings, while others explore financing options like personal loans, a home equity line of credit (HELOC), or home equity investments (HEIs).Using your home equity can enable you to cover large up-front renovation expenses like roofing, window replacement, HVAC upgrades, or outdoor construction projects that could otherwise delay timelines or strain savings. Before starting a new project, you should compare different financing options based on your overall renovation goals and budget flexibility.FAQsWhich home renovations add the most value in summer?Exterior upgrades, such as window replacements, roofing repairs, outdoor living additions, and improvements to your home’s energy efficiency are often considered high-value summer renovation projects.Is summer actually the best time to replace windows?Yes! Warm, stable weather helps installation materials seal properly and reduces weather-related delays during the replacement process.How do I know if my HVAC system needs to be replaced instead of repaired?Frequent repairs, uneven temperatures, rising utility bills, and relying on systems older than 10 to 15 years may signal it’s time to consider a replacement.What’s the best way to fund home renovations if I don’t have cash on hand?Some homeowners use their savings, while others explore financing options such as HELOCs, personal loans, or HEIs, depending on their financial goals.Can I live in my home during renovations?Many summer renovation projects can be completed while you remain in your home, although larger structural projects can temporarily disrupt your daily routines.Which renovations should I avoid doing in summer?Interior painting and hardwood floor refinishing are often better suited for fall because lower humidity can help finishes cure more evenly.How long do summer renovation projects usually take?Project timelines vary depending on size and complexity; exterior summer renovations can take anywhere from a few days to several weeks.This story was produced by Splitero and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Google’s AI search era could leave businesses fighting for fewer clicks Google’s AI search era could leave businesses fighting for fewer clicksGenerative AI has rearranged how people find what they want online, and many businesses are learning that the search tactics they relied on for years no longer behave the way they expect.For nearly three decades, the arrangement between Google and the companies that depended on it was relatively simple. Businesses climbed the rankings, Google sent visitors to their websites, and those visitors often became customers.But Google’s new AI-powered search experience is now putting pressure on that arrangement by answering more questions before a user ever leaves the search page. Digital marketing observers, including elk Marketing, have been tracking the implications closely as businesses discover that a strong ranking no longer guarantees the website visit that once followed it.Online search may feel faster and more useful to the person asking, but the businesses behind the information are starting to get less of the customer contact they once counted on.What Changed at GoogleGoogle’s vice president of Search, Elizabeth Reid, called the company’s new AI-powered Search box its biggest upgrade in more than 25 years, with the whole experience now running on Gemini. And that upgrade is already changing what people see first.AI Overviews now sit above many results, giving users a quick AI-written summary before they ever reach the links below. But AI Mode pushes the experience further by opening a conversational space where people can ask longer questions, then keep going with follow-ups without starting over.Search is also widening beyond typed words alone, reading images and files as part of the same experience. And with early agentic tools beginning to act on a person’s behalf, Google is moving Search closer to handling parts of the task, not just surfacing information.Google says adoption has moved quickly, with AI Mode now past a billion monthly active users globally and queries more than doubling each quarter since launch.Why Clicks Are Becoming Harder to EarnBefore AI Search, a Google query usually led people through a path that businesses understood well. A typed question produced a page of blue links, and the next step was a click to the site that looked most useful.But Google now interrupts that path by placing the answer directly on the results page, often resolving the search before a visitor reaches any website. And once that answer sits at the top of the page, the link below becomes easier to ignore.Pew Research Center found that people click less when an AI-generated summary appears, and the BBC reported that nearly 60% of Google searches now end without a click at all.Gisele Navarro of the review site HouseFresh told the BBC she has watched that change play out on her own pages, with impressions rising even while traffic falls. “Google is showing our links more often, but no one clicks,” she said.AI Search Is Moving From Answers to ActionsGoogle’s bigger move is that Search is starting to keep more of the customer journey inside its own walls. The company has started building search experiences that carry more of the errand from the first request to the final choice.For example, a search for dinner plans can send AI Mode across reservation platforms such as Resy, while a ticket search can send it across marketplaces such as Ticketmaster. And shopping agents go further by tracking a product’s price and buying it with Google Pay once the shopper approves the details.Even travel planning and product monitoring follow the same pattern, with Google handling more of the work before a brand gets the visit. Each task completed inside Search places Google closer to the customer relationship, leaving marketers to wonder how much of the buyer’s path they will still get to see.Why Businesses Should CareEvery business, regardless of size, has a stake in Google’s new AI search experience. Non-branded searches often introduce a company to someone who does not know its name yet, so losing that visit can mean losing the first lead or sales conversation.E-commerce and SaaS companies feel the pressure when product research ends before a trial or cart visit. But even healthcare providers and professional services face a similar risk when educational queries are answered before a prospective customer reaches their site.Each missed visit also leaves less first-party data for email capture and remarketing, giving businesses less control over the relationship after search.The New Search Visibility GameEvery few years, someone declares SEO is dead, and every few years that claim falls apart. Search still rewards visibility, but the struggle now plays out inside the answer itself, where Google’s AI decides which brands are credible enough to cite and which sources deserve to shape the response.A high ranking still helps, though it no longer carries the same weight on its own. Today, brands need accurate information wherever the web names them, and a reputation built on mentions from sources beyond their own pages.McKinsey found that a brand’s own site often makes up only 5% to 10% of the sources that AI-powered search references, and just 16% of brands today systematically track AI search performance. Winning that space now depends on whether a brand is trusted enough to be named when the answer is written.Commercial Implications and the Growing Role of Paid VisibilitySearch is also becoming more commercial in places that used to feel purely organic. Google now allows ads to appear above, below, and in some markets within AI Overviews, placing paid visibility closer to the answer itself and closer to the decision that follows.And that raises a harder question for marketers about whether search is becoming more pay-to-play, especially when a shrinking share of clicks is already being contested inside the results page.Budgets, customer acquisition costs, and attribution all get harder to manage in that setup. And when visibility depends on both auction strength and AI placement, many businesses will have to rethink how search fits into the rest of their channel mix.Google’s CounterpointWhile search is changing quickly, Google argues that the future is not as bleak as some critics suggest.Company leaders have consistently framed AI Search as an evolution of discovery rather than a replacement for the open web. And their position is that AI Overviews and AI Mode help people find information faster while still connecting them to the websites behind the answers.Google also points to built-in links and the source cards that credit each answer as evidence that users can continue exploring beyond the summary itself.The company says it still sends billions of clicks to the web daily, with executive Nick Fox telling the BBC that “the web is thriving.” Google adds that “traditional web results will continue to appear” beside its AI answers, framing it as traffic that moves around instead of disappearing.Conclusion: The Economics of Online Discovery Are ChangingGoogle’s AI Search era does not erase the need to be found, but it does change what being found is worth. A business may still appear in Google while receiving fewer direct visits, especially when an AI answer gives the user enough information to keep moving. And that makes search success harder to judge through rankings and traffic alone.Teams will need to watch how often they appear inside AI answers, then compare that visibility with the leads and revenue they can still trace. The next step is a wider approach to discovery, with stronger brand demand and more useful content that AI systems can read with confidence.Businesses that pair that visibility with direct customer relationships will have more ways to earn attention, build trust, and stay visible as AI-powered search keeps expanding.This story was produced by elk Marketing and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Walcott man facing multiple forgery, identity theft charges Stanley Blythe of Walcott faces multiple felony charges for allegedly writing eleven unauthorized life insurance policies on his own family members.
	The role customer relationship management plays in small business growth and efficiency The role customer relationship management plays in small business growth and efficiencySmall businesses (those with less than 500 employees) make up 99% of businesses in the U.S. and employ almost half of the country’s workforce. Unfortunately, most rely on outdated systems like spreadsheets for managing customer relationships. As a result, there’s a measurable difference in the cost and efficacy of customer data management between small and larger businesses.Customer relationship management (CRM) is the tracking and organizing of each customer and prospect across every touchpoint a business has with them. For small businesses, especially those with lean teams and tight margins, using CRM systems is a competitive advantage.Studies have shown that small businesses that use CRM systems see greater sales performance and a higher rate of customer retention. These businesses also see better overall efficiency when compared to small businesses that do not use CRM systems.To provide small businesses the opportunity to grow, this Nutshell guide shows the various data points that support small business CRM system use, and the most valuable tools and features small businesses should look for in a CRM solution.Key takeawaysResearch published in Sustainability in 2025 shows that CRM adoption in SMBs increases customer retention, sales, and improves operational process efficiency.Compared to larger companies, SMBs have the greatest need for CRM solutions but are the least likely to adopt them, according to Metrigy’s CX MetriCast 2025 study.CRM solutions start paying off soon after implementation, as highlighted in a 2025 study by the IJPREMS. The effects get better over time as retention improves and teams work better together.What is CRM, and why does it matter for small businesses?CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. At its core, CRM is a structured way to track and organize a business’s current and future customer touch points. Essentially, CRM software helps you manage business contact data, track business relationships, and organize future communication.For large corporations, a powerfully structured CRM system is foundational. And, while small businesses are only starting to catch up, there’s still a significant gap to fill. Metrigy's CX MetriCast 2025 study found that only 52.5% of companies with fewer than 250 employees have employed a CRM system. In comparison, 78.4% of companies with between 1,000 and 2,500 employees use a CRM. That gap shows which businesses have successfully built systems to cultivate customer relationships and which have not.The reality is that small businesses find themselves on the losing end of that gap. When one employee holds vital customer information in their email, staff turnover can ultimately disrupt customer relationships that have been built over a long period of time. That’s not the way to build a business.What does the research say about CRM and small business performance?Research shows that across sectors and scales, CRM adoption has a positive association with business performance. Importantly, research is no longer confined to large-scale enterprises.In a 2025 peer-reviewed study published in the Sustainability journal, the author studied employees across 228 SMBs and covered the impact of CRM on small businesses. With nine hypotheses in mind, the study found eight of them to be true.Out of all the 8 proven hypotheses, systematic CRM organization (the way customer data is organized in a CRM system) was found to have the highest impact on performance. The study also confirmed that CRM usage promotes customer loyalty, increases customer lifetime value, and improves competitive advantage in the dynamic marketplace.In a different study published in the International Journal of Progressive Research in Engineering Management and Science (IJPREMS) in 2025, the author surveyed small business owners from retail, healthcare, education, and service sectors.The study claimed that each major metric (time savings, automated follow-ups, improved coordination, and efficient complaint tracking) had an average score of greater than 4.7 out of 5. The research confirmed that the adoption of CRM systems by SMBs leads to a 20% to 30% improvement in effectiveness, particularly in customer retention and service quality.CRM and small business performance exampleOne tangible example of how useful the tools in modern CRMs can be comes from Brother’s Leather Supply, a small leather goods manufacturer.For a while, managing wholesale inquiries, email, and vendor communications was easy with the use of spreadsheets. But once web orders hit the company, the system became overloaded.The company was losing out on revenue because there were so many unfulfilled orders. This was all due to broken and lost opportunities for sales calls and follow-ups.Transitioning to a CRM system helped the company decrease operational friction and manage workflows to the point that they reported consistent growth of 40% every month and hit six figures in sales.How does CRM improve day-to-day operations for small teams?There are three major advantages many professionals point to: Data organization, time savings, and team coordination.Data organization is the foundation. The localization of data and past interactions in a CRM helps sales teams pick up where past team members left off. It saves them the time of having to constantly recall past interactions with the customer or start from scratch when the data can’t be found.Time savings become apparent fast. A survey performed by Freshworks in 2024 of 600 business professionals found that, across the board, the vast majority believed that CRMs helped save 5 to 10 standard work hours in a week. The results cited help with follow-ups, reminders, and alerts as being some of the primary CRM time-saving features.Team coordination is where CRM delivers something that spreadsheets structurally can't. CRM coordination tools are shared, real-time elements that allow multiple team members to access contact history, current conversations, and outstanding activities simultaneously. In small businesses where the division of responsibilities is less distinct, and everyone is involved with customer relationships, that transparency has a real impact on team dynamics.Does CRM actually help small businesses scale?Yes, and the data backing this up is compelling.According to research by Freshworks, the majority of companies that adopted a CRM recorded a sales revenue increase of 21% to 30% and a sales cycle reduction of 8 to 14 days. Companies with a CRM reported that they were 86% more likely to meet sales targets compared to companies without a CRM.A 2025 study by IJPREMS describes a moderate positive correlation between the retention of customers and the length of time a business has been using a CRM. The study argues that the longer a CRM is used effectively, the better the business’s customer retention.Over time, CRM systems gain business intelligence. The more interactions, outcomes of decisions regarding deals, and preferences that are entered, the more beneficial the system is.Businesses that adopt a CRM early differentiate themselves by having systems in place prior to rapid growth. Companies that wait to adopt a CRM typically do so during rapid growth, and the results are less predictable.Is CRM worth the investment for a small business?Yes. CRM is, without a doubt, worth the investment for small businesses.Nucleus Research found in 2024 that a CRM system delivers an average return of $3.10. But what small business owners should be thinking about is the cost of missed opportunities when operating without a CRM.Without a CRM, you risk having a slow onboarding process for new employees, losing context for deals, duplicating efforts when reaching out to clients, and more. These all affect your bottom line but are more difficult to quantify than the subscription fee.That said, CRM systems are becoming more accessible to small businesses. Metrigy's 2025 study recorded a significant jump in the adoption of CRM systems by small and medium-sized businesses in 2024.Subscription fees and software complexity, which had kept small businesses from adopting CRM, are becoming a thing of the past. In fact, entry-level plans for major CRM systems now start at under $30 per user per month.Growth doesn't wait for better systemsA CRM is not an enterprise software program that small businesses have to adapt to. For any business that relies on relationships to earn revenue and grow, a CRM platform is an important business tool.This story was produced by Nutshell and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	A major risk area every business owner should know about A major risk area every business owner should know aboutAs a small business owner, did you know that you could be held liable for bodily injury or property damage resulting from your operations or products, even if the injury or damage occurs after the work is long done and your policy has expired? And if the damage happens after you have cancelled your insurance, you may not have coverage for the incident, even though it results from operations you performed or products you sold during your policy term.How can you protect yourself if you go out of business or don’t renew your general liability policy, if a claim related to work you previously completed comes your way? Below, Thimble shares what you need to know.There are two types of exposures:A premises/operations exposureA products and completed operations exposureThe former includes risks associated within the physical location of your business or job site while your operations are taking place. The latter exposure type focuses on the risks associated with your operations, products or services once they have been sold or completed. Premises/operations incidents usually occur during the policy period, so typically the damage arising from them does, too. But when it comes to incidents that arise from your products or completed operations, an injury or damage could occur months after a policy expires.Once a product has left your hands or a project is completed, if something arises after that, it is considered a product and completed operations loss, exposing your small business to major liability. And as a small business owner, preparing yourself for these types of scenarios — or at least understanding what your policies cover and don’t cover — is critical.Most policies that small businesses purchase are known as “occurrence” policies. This means you must have a policy in force when the damage or injury occurs, irrespective of when the work was done.Consider a hypothetical scenario where this type of coverage comes into play. Let’s say a contractor in Florida named Bob is hired to build a patio deck. Bob purchases insurance for a policy term that matches the duration of the project. Six months after the project is completed and the insurance policy expires, a grandma falls and breaks her arm when the railing fails. Bob is still liable for the bodily injury claim, even though the insurance he purchased was no longer in force. Because the policy he purchased only covered injury or damage which happened during the policy term, Bob panics. Is he going to be covered under his old, expired general liability policy?Just as personal injury is a type of coverage under a general liability policy, products and completed operations is a coverage type small business owners should look for to help protect against scenarios like these — especially if they are purchasing a short-term policy. If Bob the contractor has product and operations coverage that extends through when the porch railing accident occurs, he’ll have coverage.Many small business owners don’t know to look for this type of coverage, or what it really means, making this a major risk area to consider.How can you be sure you’re getting this coverage?A small business owner should review for products and operations coverage in their general liability policy. More specifically, policy holders should review what is included during the policy term, and under which conditions. Not all policies are created equal, so checking to ensure you have continued products and completed operation coverage for critical periods is crucial. For more personalized insurance advice, find and consult with a licensed insurance broker near you.This story was produced by Thimble and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Overspent on vacation? How to bounce back financially Overspent on vacation? How to bounce back financiallyYou're home from vacation and ready to dive back into everyday life — including facing your bank account balance. Whether travel simply cost more than you budgeted for or unforeseen circumstances drove up the price, overspending on vacation can happen to the best of us.Below, Ally shares debt repayment tips to help you take control of your vacation debt and begin your journey toward financial recovery.Understanding your debtTo make a plan to pay down the cost of your travels, you have to know exactly how much you owe.Assess the amount: After all the charges have been processed, take a close look at the transactions to see how much you spent.Identify the sources: Whether you used your credit card, debit card or cash during your trip, make sure the final amount factors in each method of payment.Determine the interest rates: Knowing which payment sources have interest can help you decide which to pay off first.Creating a repayment planHow you approach paying down your vacation debt depends on your overall financial goals and personal preferences.Review your budgetYou can either create a budget or review your current one to determine how much you can reasonably afford to put toward your vacation debt each month in addition to your other expenses.Debt prioritizationWhile there’s no “right way” to reduce debt, using one of these methods can be a good place to start:Avalanche: Pay the minimum balances on each debt and put any extra income toward the balance with the highest interest rate. Once that’s paid off, you’ll direct those payments to the balance with the next highest interest rate, and so on.Snowball: Make all your minimum payments, then put any funds leftover in your budget toward your smallest balance. As each debt gets crossed off the list, those funds now go toward paying off the next lowest debt.Set realistic goalsWhile debt repayment can feel daunting, establishing achievable payment targets and creating a timeline can make the process feel more manageable and keep you motivated.Strategies for accelerating debt repaymentOnce you’ve gotten into a good rhythm for paying down your debt, you can start to find ways to accelerate your repayment schedule. For example, if you've recently been promoted or received a tax refund, you could put that extra cash toward your debt. Another option is consolidation, which can simplify your debt into one monthly payment and even help you secure a lower interest rate. If you’re interested in really speeding things up, starting a side hustle like freelancing or pet sitting could help you earn some extra income.Avoid future vacation debtThe good news is you can always learn from the past to avoid similar situations on future trips.Plan and budgetAs you scope out the itinerary for your next vacation, take into account more expenses than just transportation and accommodations. Including meals and souvenirs into your travel budget can help you stay more in control while out of town.Set realistic expectationsIt’s okay to splurge here and there while on vacation, but it’s also important to make sure the majority of your experience and activities stay within your budget. By setting realistic expectations on what you can and can’t afford, you can plan a trip you will enjoy without breaking the bank.Consider alternativesNot every vacation needs to be an international extravaganza. Staycations, camping and road trips are all budget-friendly alternatives that still allow you to get some much-needed rest and relaxation.Put vacation debt behind youWe all go overboard from time to time. Whether it was travel delays, unexpected hotel fees or too many souvenirs, overspending on vacation happens. But you can find your financial footing again by making a plan to pay off any travel-related debt.This story was produced by Ally Financial and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	US new home sales outlook: Housing market trends and what the latest data signals for 2026 US new home sales outlook: Housing market trends and what the latest data signals for 2026 A SoFi analysis of new home sales data suggests the U.S. housing market may be showing early signs of stabilization. Current indicators, including steadying interest rates and a gradual softening of new home sales prices, point to a potentially more consistent environment in 2026.New home sales provide critical insight into the overall U.S. housing market. The data is telling of real estate market demand, which can impact mortgage interest rates and home prices. It’s also a leading indicator of broader economic stability.This signal carries extra weight after years of housing market volatility. Not only have supply and demand fluctuated, but affordability concerns — often linked to high mortgage interest rates and rising sales prices — have made homeownership a significant challenge for many.To determine what these shifts mean for 2026, SoFi paired the latest sales data with expert forecasts to assess what may lie ahead for the U.S. housing market.Key FindingsNew home sales are up 18.7% year-over-year (seasonally adjusted) as mortgage interest rates and inventory start to stabilize throughout many U.S. housing markets.A steady supply and demand for new homes is a strong indicator of a healthy economy. It can even provide valuable insight into individual financial stability.Median and average new home sales prices have slowly started to come down, and experts forecast a potential return to affordability in the coming years.Although the national housing market appears to be steadily improving in many ways, some regional and local markets show an opposite trend with declining inventory and sales rates.Factors such as new construction activity, new home supply, builder incentives, mortgage rates, and overall affordability can influence buyer behavior and the future of the U.S. housing market.If demand remains steady, the inventory of new homes for sale is predicted to last just under eight months (seasonally adjusted).In early 2026, SoFi analyzed the latest data from authoritative sources to make predictions about the U.S. housing market. SoFi Latest US New Home Sales Data and Housing Market ConditionsNew Home Sales ActivityAccording to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), new single-family home sales were running at an annualized pace of 737,000 (a seasonally adjusted estimate of monthly sales projected over a full year). That’s just 0.1% lower than the new home sales rate the month before, suggesting that sales activity has largely stabilized rather than experiencing sharp month-to-month swings. Figures are seasonally adjusted to eliminate short-term factors that affect the data, such as climate, holidays, and production cycles.While the month-to-month changes are negligible, the annual difference is much higher. The seasonally adjusted sales rate of new homes in October 2024 was 621,000. That’s an 18.7% year-over-year (YoY) increase.Trends in New Home Sales PricesAs the overall new home sales rate rose, median sales prices fell. In the 12 months ending in October 2025, the median sales price of new homes dropped from $426,300 to $392,300. That’s an 8% YoY decline.It’s worth noting that the average sales price of new homes rose 3% from September to October last year (from $483,500 to $498,000). However, there’s been an overall YoY decline — down 4.6% from October 2024, when the average new home sales price was $521,900.New Home Inventory LevelsOn the inventory side, the U.S. housing market hasn’t seen a significant change in inventory of late. In both September and October of last year, an estimated 488,000 new homes were on the market (seasonally adjusted). That reflects a 1.7% YoY increase.So, what do these shifts indicate about the current housing market balance? For starters, the available inventory of new U.S. homes for sale was expected to last 7.9 months as of October 2025 (seasonally adjusted). In other words, if homes kept selling at the current pace and no new inventory came onto the market, it would take 7.9 months to sell every available home.This figure falls short of estimates from earlier in the year. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the supply of new homes was projected to last 8.9 months at the end of February 2025 and 9.2 months at the end of July. Still, supply hasn’t changed much since the tail end of last year. And new home inventory levels are also on par with the July 2024 estimate of 7.9 months.When supply remains steady to meet demand, it’s a good indicator of a healthy economy. It also keeps housing prices from skyrocketing. SoFi Behind the NumbersThe rising number of new home sales also suggests more buyers and sellers are on the market. This could reflect anything from builder incentives to the availability of low down payment mortgage options (like Federal Housing Administration or VA loans). Of course, housing doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Increased demand may also indicate greater individual economic stability. There could be regional or local variances at play here, however, as the national unemployment rate was 4.4% in February 2026. How this might affect the national housing market for the year remains to be seen.Regional and Metro-Level New Home Sales TrendsNational new home sales trends are useful, but they don’t tell the whole story. Regional and metro-level data can reveal much more about what’s happening on the ground.Redfin Data Center found that home sales across all residential property types rose slightly from 432,467 in January 2025 to 435,735 in December 2025. That’s less than a 1% difference. But demand for these types of homes has cooled in the following major metropolitan areas:Washington, D.C.: 4,669 to 4,464 (-4.39%)Philadelphia: 1,670 to 1,634 (-2.16%)Seattle: 2,938 to 2,816 (-4.15%)Chicago: 6,536 to 6,374 (-2.48%)The housing market also varies regionally. Every year, the HUD Office of Policy Development and Research publishes Comprehensive Housing Market Analysis reports on major U.S. regions. Key data from the latest reports (second quarter 2025) include the following.New England (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont):The housing supply in every state except for Vermont was below the national level.New and existing home sales fell 2% from May 2024 to May 2025. New construction properties (single-family) also declined.Mid-Atlantic (Delaware, D.C., Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia):The region saw a 7% increase in home sales prices, while homebuilding activity fell 10%.Housing inventory was estimated to last 2–4.9 months.Southwest (Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas):Home sales decreased in all states, with a notable 11% decline in Texas.The permitting of new single-family homes in the broader Southwest region fell 6% YoY.Northwest (Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Washington):The number of single-family homes permitted fell 3% YoY, with Oregon seeing the greatest decline in new home construction (down 9%).Home sales within the region fell 1% YoY compared with 11% YoY in 2024.The U.S. housing market is somewhat of a mixed bag. While new construction inventory, sales rates, and prices might be relatively stable in one region, the opposite can be true elsewhere.If you’re considering buying a home in 2026, awareness of regional and local housing market differences can help. An area with rising new home sales could indicate more affordable prices (and mortgage rates) and potentially higher inventory levels. It might also suggest broader economic stability — not just in employment and job growth rates, but also in income levels.What’s Driving New Home Sales and the Housing Market Into 2026?Several forces shape the trajectory of new home sales. Some work in buyers’ favor, while others create headwinds.Mortgage RatesSince mortgage rates so directly affect affordability, they also figure heavily into people’s buying decisions. As of February 2026, the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 6.11% (or 5.50% for a 15-year fixed-rate loan). Rates have climbed dramatically since their 2021 lows of under 3.00%, but the broader trend over the past year has been downward. For reference, 30-year rates hit 7.79% in October 2023.Listing PricesAs noted earlier, average and median new home sales prices have been trending downward of late, with the median dropping 8% YoY as of October 2025. If recent trends continue, 2026 could be the year that sidelined buyers can make a move.Builder IncentivesBuilder incentives have become a widespread tactic to keep sales moving. According to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), 65% of builders reported using sales incentives in January 2026, marking the 10th consecutive month that incentive use has exceeded 60%. These incentives include mortgage rate buydowns, closing cost assistance, and other buyer-facing concessions.Beyond incentives, builders are also adjusting on price. The same survey found that 40% of builders reported cutting listing prices in January. The average price reduction was 6%, up from 5% in December. SoFi Builder SentimentConfidence among new single-family homebuilders fell two points in January to 37 out of 100, according to the NAHB. This is especially concerning for lower- and mid-range sectors of the housing market. In 2024 and 2025, builders experienced (or expected to experience) challenges regarding high interest rates, rising inflation and material costs, and other economic issues. Some of these pressures, like interest rates, could ease in 2026.Construction ActivityAs of October 2025, there were 1,412,000 building permits (for future construction) and 1,246,000 housing starts (new construction) for privately owned housing units. The number of completed units was 1,386,000.However, it’s worth noting that housing starts and completed construction fell below prior-year rates (down 7.8% and 15.3%, respectively). This points to a lower-than-expected supply. SoFi Buyer BehaviorA number of economic forces shape buyer behavior. For example, inflationary pressure that drives up building costs can translate to more expensive homes, keeping people from entering the market.Employment rates and income play a role, too. The national unemployment rate was 4.4% in December 2025, up 0.4% from the beginning of the year. It dropped to 4.3% in January. Higher unemployment rates typically dampen housing demand.2026 New Home Sales Outlook and Housing Market Forecast: The Short-Term ForecastSalesAccording to Fannie Mae’s Economic and Strategic Research Group, new single-family home sales are projected to rise approximately 3.7% YoY in 2026. Sales are then expected to increase slightly in 2027, with a projected 0.6% gain.Total home sales are projected to rise approximately 2.7% in 2026, followed by stronger growth in 2027, signaling a gradual recovery rather than rapid expansion.In 2026, total home sales are expected to reach approximately 4.9 million, including roughly 707,000 new single-family home sales. That’s modestly above 2025 levels, despite ongoing affordability concerns.InventoryOn the supply side, Fannie Mae projects total housing starts to decline 3.7% in 2026, driven by a 3% drop in single-family starts and a 5.2% decline in multifamily starts. Starts are in line for a modest recovery in 2027, with a projected increase of 2.2%.Mortgage Rates and OriginationsMortgage rates continue to be a factor heading into 2026, but Fannie Mae’s outlook is somewhat positive. Rates are expected to hover at around 6.00% for a 30-year mortgage, much as they did throughout most of 2025. If rates hold steady and housing prices decline both nationally and regionally, more buyers could feel confident entering or returning to the market.While single-family mortgage originations are off to a slow start in 2026, Fannie Mae predicts a rebound as the year progresses. This suggests greater buyer engagement may be on the horizon.Broader Pricing and Affordability TrendsHome prices are still rising, but the pace is cooling. According to HUD, annual price growth ranged from 1.8% to 2.3% in July 2025, down from higher gains earlier in the year. First American Data & Analytics put in sharper context, reporting that annual home price appreciation has hit its slowest growth rate since 2012. If this continues, housing affordability could improve, especially in areas with higher inventory levels.Looking further ahead, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) expects sales activity to increase over the next 25 years. Demographics drive that prediction, as millennials and Gen Z move toward major life milestones like big moves, job transitions, and growing families, all of which have historically driven homeownership demand.What Could Shift the BalanceOne factor that could influence supply is the potential easing of rate lock-in. Homeowners sitting on sub-4.00% mortgages have had little financial reason to sell, keeping existing homes on the market.But if interest rates gradually decline, that math would change. And if more existing inventory comes online alongside new construction (new single-family home sales were already up 18.7% in September 2025), buyers could see more options. Ultimately, the 2026 housing market might not go back to “normal,” but it appears to be moving toward a healthier balance. SoFi What New Home Sales Trends Mean for Homebuyers in 2026The data points toward a housing market that’s gradually becoming more accessible. Mortgage rates are expected to hold near 6.00%, home price appreciation is slowing to its lowest rate in over a decade, and builder incentives remain widespread.Buyers shouldn’t expect dramatic corrections, but the trends are encouraging. Higher inventory and cooling prices are bringing the market closer to balance. And that’s good for sellers, too, since price stability tends to support more consistent demand.For returning and first-time homebuyers alike in the market for new construction, the current environment shows reason for optimism. Builder incentives like rate buydowns and closing cost assistance can help lower the purchase price. And buyers who are flexible on location may also find more favorable conditions in nearby markets with higher inventory. SoFi Methodology and Data Sources for New Home Sales AnalysisAccuracy and transparency matter. That’s why SoFi relies on authoritative primary and reputable third-party sources to procure and analyze data — in this case, U.S. housing market trends and predictions.This new home sales data analysis is fundamentally based on the latest available housing market data from 2025 and early 2026. Core data sources for regional and metro insights, market trends, affordability, and forecasting include the U.S. Census Bureau/HUD, Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED), Redfin, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, MBA, and NAHB.Note: Some data includes both new and existing home sales. This is due either to limited data on the former or blended data in original reporting. A few figures come from Q4 2024 for added context.The TakeawayThe broad picture heading into 2026 is one of gradual improvement, not a dramatic reset. New home price growth has moderated, and mortgage rates are projected to remain relatively stable. While supply constraints persist in some regions, conditions appear more balanced than in recent years.FAQsWhat are new home sales, and how are they different from existing home sales?The U.S. Census Bureau defines new home sales as the signing of a sales contract or acceptance of a deposit on a property at any stage of development (not started, under construction, or completed). An estimated 25% of these homes are sold at the time of completion, while the remainder are split between those not yet started and currently under construction.Existing home sales work differently. They’re based on closings rather than purchase agreements. They usually involve a sales contract signed 30–60 days prior to being reported.Why are new home sales important for understanding the housing market?New home sales data is typically available one or two months before existing sales, making it a leading indicator of broader economic activity. It offers an early read on housing demand, buyer confidence, and pricing trends, though it tends to be more volatile than existing home sales data.What does the latest new home sales data suggest about the 2026 housing market?The data suggests a housing market that’s gradually moving toward better balance. Home price growth is moderating, mortgage rates are expected to hold relatively steady, and new home sales activity is projected to rise modestly in 2026.How do mortgage rates affect new home sales?Lower mortgage rates tend to bring more buyers into the market, while higher or volatile rates often push potential buyers to the sidelines until conditions stabilize.Are new construction homes becoming more affordable?While there are regional differences, new home prices have come down. The median sales price fell 8% YoY (from October 2024 to 2025). The average sales price fell 4.6% during this same period.Which regions are seeing the strongest new home sales trends?New home construction rates have fallen in certain areas, like Oregon, Idaho, Arkansas, and Delaware. In Vermont, the housing supply remained above the national level. Meanwhile, some Western and Southern housing markets have seen overall higher active inventories due to slower markets.Is 2026 a good time to buy a new construction home?It depends on your budget and needs. Buying a home is a major decision (and commitment), so take the time to consider whether it fits into your big-picture plans. Be sure to weigh the costs as well — not just financial. You’ll want to be emotionally and mentally prepared, too.Where does new home sales data come from?SoFi uses data from reliable primary and third-party resources. This includes organizations like the Census Bureau/HUD, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, Mortgage Bankers Association Forecasts (MBA), and the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB).How does new home inventory affect housing prices and buyer competition?Greater supply can keep up with high demand, but the inverse is also true. When there isn’t enough inventory, buyer competition can be fierce. Sometimes, housing prices will rise, and sellers will be less willing to negotiate with prospects.This story was produced by SoFi and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.

Monday, June 29th, 2026