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

Friday, April 3rd, 2026
	Iran hits Gulf refineries as Trump warns U.S. will attack Iranian bridges, power plants Iranian officials said one of the longest bridges linking Tehran to the city of Karaj was destroyed overnight, while Iranian missiles and drones hit Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait's largest oil refinery, setting some units on fire.
	Reverend Hitchcock This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.From the moment it was founded in 1843, the little manufacturing village of Moline grew rapidly. New England…
	Verdicts against Meta and Google may bring a new era of big tech accountability Advocates hope recent verdicts against social media platforms will build momentum for bigger changes in Silicon Valley.
	After the release of the Epstein files, why have there been so few arrests? Legal experts tell NPR five possible reasons that, despite the accusations made against rich and powerful people in the files, the DOJ have made no additional arrests. The big one? Lack of evidence.
	Evacuation of U.S. troops from Mideast base sends community groups scrambling to help Troops and their families have been pushed back to the United States after their bases in the Middle East were threatened by Iranian counterattacks. Community groups are scrambling to react.
	Takeaways from Trump's tough week, as war and gas prices take a toll President Trump faces mounting political pressure on multiple fronts, particularly when it comes to his handling of the war and the consequences it's having on the economy.
	Out of this world: What Artemis II astronauts are eating Hot sauces, barbecued beef brisket, cake, 58 tortillas – here's a look at what the astronauts aboard Orion have to eat during their journey.
	Blake Lively's sexual harassment claims against Justin Baldoni tossed out but robust case remains Blake Lively's sexual harassment claims against Justin Baldoni over the movie "It Ends With Us" were dismissed Thursday by a federal judge who left intact three claims, including retaliation, that will let a jury hear many of the allegations anyway.
	New North YMCA location to open in July The current location will close on June 19 and the new facility will open on July 6, officials said.
	Cuba releasing 2,010 prisoners as the US pressures the island's government The Cuban government said the pardons were a "humanitarian gesture" in connection with Holy Week and didn't mention mounting pressures with the U.S.
Thursday, April 2nd, 2026
	Galesburg soldier named Illinois Army National Guard’s Best Warrior A soldier from a Galesburg-based unit is being recognized as one of the best in the state— after winning the Illinois Army National Guard’s Best Warrior competition.
	Illinois home care advocates push for pay increase Home care advocates say a pay increase is the only way to solve a worker shortage in the industry
	Advocates push for more mental health resources for first responders Illinois leaders brainstormed ways to get more mental health resources into the hands of first responders who need them
	ICE detention deaths are on a record pace. One Texas facility bears the brunt ICE inspectors in February found 49 violations to detention standards at Camp East Montana, including failure from staff to"accurately document required checks to prevent significant self-harm and suicide."
	YMCA of the Iowa Mississippi Valley announces new location of North Y The YMCA of the Iowa Mississippi Valley has announced the relocation of the North YMCA to its new facility at 1010 E. Kimberly Road in Davenport.
	Davenport police mark Child Abuse Prevention Month with pinwheel garden Officials said the blue pinwheel is a symbol of the healthy, happy and full childhoods all children deserve.
	One Quad City Facebook group saves baby animals with help from community With winter turning into spring, warmer weather won't be the only thing people will see. You might notice more baby animals in the wild. With the fluctuating weather, storms, and human impact, some animals become sick, hurt, orphaned, or separated from their parents. The "Save the Wild - Wildlife Rehab in the QC" group on [...]
	Scott County EMA explains when emergency sirens are used during severe weather During severe weather, sirens will sound for tornado warnings, storms with winds over 70 miles per hour, and/or storms with hail the size of golf balls or larger.
	Muscatine Art Center facing questions with impending $200,000 budget cut The board president says he'll have to reevaluate services and operations in the next few months.
	Davenport police mark Child Abuse Prevention Month with pinwheel garden Officials said the blue pinwheel is a symbol of the healthy, happy and full childhoods all children deserve.
	Davenport North YMCA to move locations The YMCA will find a new home on E Kimberly Road. The last day at the current location will be June 19.
	Training EMS on how to best respond to people with autism A family in the area is working to ensure emergency workers know how to help people with autism when responding to a call. It's the focus of the Snaith Family ASD Sensory Project. The Snaith family has personal reasons to provide this training. "One in 36 children are diagnosed with autism at this point - [...]
	Muscatine County Sheriff's Office: 'Observed tornado' damages 2 properties Deputies wrote that occupants at both properties were found safe after the tornado passed.
	Muscatine County Sheriff's Office: 'Observed tornado' damages 2 properties Deputies wrote that occupants at both properties were found safe after the tornado passed.
	Severe weather threat over for Thursday night in Quad Cities It was a rough stretch between 4 and 7 p.m. around the quad cities - but things are quiet now! We'll have to catch our breath quickly though, there's another chance for strong storms late Friday evening. Friday's storms arrive a little later than what we had Thursday. Best chance for storms Friday is LATE [...]
	Henry County Sheriff's Office: Beware of 'traffic violation' scam The Henry County Sheriff's Office has been made aware of a fraudulent notice circulating by text message, email, and other means claiming to be from the “State of Illinois," according to a Facebook post. The scam involves traffic violations and unpaid fines. "It’s fake! Don’t be fooled. Spread the word!" the post says.
	West Liberty’s outdoor weather sirens fail to activate, officials say West Liberty’s outdoor weather sirens failed to active before severe weather on Thursday, officials said.
	The Heart of the Story: The final flight Our Quad Cities News is partnering with award-winning journalist Gary Metivier for The Heart of the Story. Each week, Gary showcases inspiring stories of everyday people doing cool stuff, enjoying their hobbies and living life to the fullest. Stories that feature the best of the human condition. A Quad-City man wrapped up decades of service [...]
	Sandburg, Galesburg, holds career expo About 50 businesses and organizations will meet with job seekers at the 34th annual Sandburg Career Expo from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. April 8 in the gymnasium on the Galesburg campus, 2400 Tom L. Wilson Blvd. The career expo is free and open to the public. Job seekers will have the opportunity to network with businesses [...]
	Scott County EMA explains when emergency sirens are used during severe weather During severe weather, sirens will sound for tornado warnings, storms with winds over 70 miles per hour, and/or storms with hail the size of golf balls or larger.
	WIU, Black Hawk College, formalize new articulation agreement Western Illinois University and Black Hawk College (BHC) officially formalized a new articulation agreement during a signing event held Wednesday at the Black Hawk College-Quad Cities campus in Moline. The agreement establishes a collaborative partnership designed to create seamless academic pathways for students pursuing degrees in high-demand fields, including mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, engineering technology [...]
	Clinton crews respond to carbon dioxide leak On Wednesday, the Clinton Fire Department was dispatched to the 2500 block of Lincoln Way for a structure fire, according to a news release. Because of high call volume abut noon, with four active emergency incidents occurring at the time of dispatch, Clinton Fire Department units were initially committed to other calls. As a result, [...]
	Damage, power outage reported Jackson County after severe storms Damage and several power outages have been reported in Jackson County, Iowa following severe storms and a possible tornado moving through the area Thursday evening.
	Ribbon-cutting held for new downtown Moline cafe The ribbon cutting was held on Monday to celebrate the opening on Joh’s Cafe.
	Illinois drivers face high fuel costs as prices reach average of $4.25 per gallon For the first time since 2022, gas prices nationwide are past an average of $4.00 per gallon, and fuel prices in Illinois are among the most expensive.
	More than 2,000 people without power as storms roll through the greater Quad Cities region Aliant Energy has identified approximately 500 people without power near Charlotte, Iowa.
	Rock out with Common Chord at Battle of the Businesses An epic showdown returns as teams from the QCA become rock stars for a night and take the stage to show their hidden musical talents and raise funds for music education. Margot Day from Common Chord dropped by Our Quad Cities News with all the details on Battle of the Businesses. For more information, click [...]
	Rock Island Police partner with EveryChild on Pinwheels for Prevention event As part of the National Child Abuse Prevention Month, the Rock Island Police Department, in collaboration with EveryChild, will host a Pinwheels for Prevention event to raise awareness for child abuse prevention at 11 a.m. Friday, April 3, in front of the Rock Island PoliceDepartment, a news release says. The event will bring together community [...]
	Programming Note: Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune to re-air overnight on KWQC Jeopardy will re-air at 1:12 a.m. on KWQC after serve weather coverage.
	Turtle uses tiny skateboard in recovery The surgery was made possible through donations raised on GoFundMe. Nahant Marsh collected about $8,000 to cover her CT scan, surgery, and ongoing recovery care, which is going very well.
	Programming Note: Jeopardy to re-air overnight on KWQC Jeopardy will re-air at 1:12 a.m. on KWQC after serve weather coverage.
	Severe Thunderstorm Warning until THU 6:30 PM CDT Severe Thunderstorms with Strong Winds and Hail Expected Until 6:30 PM CDT
	Severe Thunderstorm Warning until THU 5:30 PM CDT Severe Thunderstorms with Damaging Winds and Hail Expected Until 5:30 PM CDT
	Crime Stoppers: Help police identify driver who fled at 100+ mph in Ford Fusion Bettendorf police are searching for a man they say he sped away from officers at more than 100 mph.
	Crime Stoppers: Man wanted in connection with shooting, reward offered Jkel Britt, 19, is wanted by the Rock Island police on a warrant for aggravated battery with a firearm and aggravated discharge of a firearm in relation to a March 21 shooting.
	Crime Stoppers: Man wanted by the Rock Island County Sheriff’s Office Timothy Gustafson, 36, is wanted by the Rock Island County Sheriff’s Office for failure to appear in court on a charge of felon in possession of a firearm.
	Rotation spotted west of QC; tornado warning issued for Muscatine County Weather spotters reported a rotation about 4:20 p.m. Thursday in the Riverside, Iowa, area. in Washington County, according to Chief Meteorologist Andy McCray, Our Quad Cities News. The rotation was spotted .25 miles south of Riverside, Iowa, west of the Quad Cities, and south of Iowa City. A tornado warning has been issued until 5:15 [...]
	Student pilot died in Whiteside County plane crash, NTSB report says The person killed in a Whiteside County plane crash was a student pilot, according to an NTSB report.
	Gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand calls for term, age limits on elected officials Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand told reporters Thursday he believes issues like term limits and age limits for elected officials and mandatory prison sentences for stealing tax dollars can gain bipartisan support.
	4th annual G-ALES-Burg Beer Fest is supporting birthmark research This year's fest will return on Saturday, April 11 in Galesburg, featuring local and regional vendors, food, raffles, games and more. Here's how to get your tickets.
	More than 80 eateries set for QC Restaurant Week This year's event runs April 6-12 and features a diverse lineup of locally owned eateries, cafes, breweries, and fine dining establishments.
	Justin Hartley to deliver 2026 commencement address at Knox College Hartley is known for his current role in CBS's "Tracker." He also starred in the NBC drama, "This is Us."
	Report: Energy prices are rising all over the country. Here are some reasons why. A new report from the congressional Joint Economic Committee found Iowa households paid 5% more for energy in 2025 and Illinois families paid 16% more.
	Now is the time to start getting kids ready for summer camp From getting a pre-camp check-up to what to pack, nurse practitioner Kyllie Schmidt shares the steps families should take before sending kids off for fun.
	Preliminary NTSB report released in fatal Rock Falls plane crash A preliminary report details a fatal Rock Falls plane crash, including the student pilot’s experience and conditions at the time.
	A botanist searches for the seeds of the rare Death Valley Sage For more than 15 years, botanist Naomi Fraga has been trying to collect seeds from the rare Death Valley sage, for safekeeping in a vault of native California seeds.
	Trump administration sues three states over attempts to regulate prediction markets The suits are the most ambitious effort to date that the Trump administration has gone to try to override state laws and set the rules for the fast-growing and increasingly divisive betting industry.
	Electricity costs climb nationwide: Illinois sees fourth-highest jump A new congressional report shows Iowa households paid about 5% more for energy in 2025 than in 2024. Illinois households paid about 16% more.
	Shelter offers lower-cost pet adoptions for seniors through national program The program is bringing together older adults and adult pets, helping both find comfort, routine, and companionship.
	Scott County citizens group asks public to attend commission meeting to oppose power plant The state utility commission hearing is noon-2 p.m. Monday, April 6, at the Rhythm City Casino.
	Pay it Forward: Quad Cities cancer survivors sew comfort for kids Two Quad Cities sisters who beat cancer now sew stuffed animals for children, turning their own experiences into comfort for others.
	Two new reports urge ‘human-centered’ school AI adoption Two new reports urge ‘human-centered’ school AI adoptionTwo new reports caution that if schools make missteps implementing AI, the results could haunt them for years, locking them into a future largely written by big tech instead of those closest to kids.The 74 examines the reports, both the results of small, intensive gatherings of educators, policymakers, researchers, tech officials and students last year, share a common warning: AI in schools must serve human-centered learning that doesn’t simply push for more efficiency. To do anything else risks creating a generation of young people ill-equipped for the future.The findings come as young people say they’re turning to generative AI more than ever: A Pew Research Center survey released in late February found that more than half of teens ages 13 to 17 use chatbots to search for information or get help with schoolwork. About 4 in 10 report using AI to summarize articles, books or videos or create or edit images or videos. And about 1 in 5 say they use chatbots to get news.For the first report, a group of 18 people met in July in Phoenix. Brought together by AI for Education, a training and policy organization, and Imagine Learning, a digital curriculum company, the report treats the question of how schools should view AI as a literal “choose-your-own-adventure” story: The authors lay out three possible scenarios in which educators in an imaginary school district make radically different decisions about the technology.In the first scenario, the district retreats from AI altogether after a data breach, abandoning a previously created “Innovation Lab,” while teachers return to traditional instruction and testing.The restrictions soon backfire. Students continue using AI at home, but without guidance, take shortcuts on homework, developing a kind of survival mechanism they privately call “school brain.” Seeing how irrelevant most lessons are, they do just enough to get by, offloading thinking to AI tools. When tested, they show shallow understanding and poor foundational skills.Test scores plummet, college acceptances drop, and 40% of graduates land on academic probation. Employers report that graduates can neither work independently nor collaborate effectively with AI. Teachers begin departing in waves.Retreating from AI, the authors find, creates “the worst of both worlds” — students who can neither think independently nor use AI effectively.In the second scenario, the district, facing competition from AI-driven private schools, goes all-in, adopting a comprehensive, district-wide AI platform for automated instruction. The platform promises greater efficiency via AI tutors, automated grading and behavioral monitoring. And while it initially lowers costs and produces higher test scores, teachers find that students are soon gaming the algorithms rather than learning. The auto-grader penalizes valid but unconventional answers, while multilingual learners are unfairly penalized for nonstandard answers on tests.Teachers find themselves defending grades they didn’t assign and can’t fully explain, while families that challenge grades are stopped by “proprietary algorithms” that even administrators can’t review. The system delivers “a black box” that removes human judgment: “Students could feel the difference between being evaluated by an algorithm and being understood by a teacher.”Before long, graduates struggle with collaboration, creativity and adaptability — skills employers and colleges increasingly value.In the report’s third choice, the district, via its Innovation Lab, redesigns its offerings to prepare students for an AI-driven future while keeping a focus on “human-centered” education. Rather than focusing solely on technology, it develops a “graduate profile” that emphasizes critical thinking, ethical reasoning and human-AI collaboration, among other indicators.The lab shifts to flexible, project-based learning, and students soon learn to use AI as a tool that supports but doesn’t replace their thinking. While the district continues to satisfy state accountability through testing, it also pursues federal innovation grants to fund portfolio-based assessment systems based on the graduate profile.All is not rosy, though. The redesign is expensive and hard on teachers. Enrollment suffers as political resistance builds steam. But graduates soon demonstrate an ability to critically evaluate AI tools, adapt quickly to workplace changes and develop a “learn how to learn” mindset that serves them in the long term.Alumni soon report that their “robust” portfolios of work are a huge advantage in competitive job markets, and employers say they are the only new hires who critically evaluate AI’s recommendations, spotting hallucinations and biases.Amanda Bickerstaff, AI for Education’s co-founder and CEO, said the first two scenarios are what educators at the July convening said they were seeing most often in schools.“There was a strong recognition from everyone, including the students, the two high schoolers, that the traditional methods have not worked … for decades,” she said. “But it feels safer.”As for going “all in” on AI, she said, that point of view is inevitable in many places, given current aggressive efforts of tech giants like Google, which are “pushing into schools,” going directly to students.“There’s this real pressure from both ed tech and AI itself, because it’s such a big market that’s never really been figured out,” she said.What makes it worse is that few tech firms employ enough teachers to ensure that their products work well for students. “They don’t have hundreds of education people,” Bickerstaff said. Their education teams are “fractions of their headcount, working on tools that are instantly in students’ hands.”The third path, in which the district redesigns its offerings, is “the most human” of the three, she said, and the most intentional. “The third path is the one that trusts humans and educators and students and families,” Bickerstaff said.‘Explicitly ambidextrous’ schoolingAnother paper by the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a think tank at Arizona State University, also calls for a new approach to schools’ decisions about AI, saying the technology “should be a catalyst for human-centered learning, not a replacement.”The CRPE report, the result of another gathering in November, asserts that schools are at a pivotal moment. Their AI policies could go one of two ways: They can either entrench outdated educational models or help bring about a fundamental transformation of schooling.“One of the big things that came out of those discussions was a strong feeling among the group that AI is currently being thought of as a productivity tool for the education system that we have, rather than a tool to radically improve teaching and learning and outcomes for kids,” said Robin Lake, CRPE’s executive director.During its meeting, the group repeatedly discussed an “efficiency paradox” that could make schools faster and cheaper without addressing students’ actual needs. To protect against it, they call for a more coherent, human-centered approach that is “explicitly ambidextrous,” improving current practices while intentionally building toward new learning models.The problem with AI, the report alleges, is that it could simply improve the efficiency of outdated educational models. It notes that the Scantron, a time-saving testing technology, for decades reinforced low-level standardized assessments, often at the expense of improved learning.Instead of using AI as a new kind of Scantron, it says, AI could make way for several innovations, including new assessments that capture real-time performance as students work. It could even measure key nonacademic indicators such as belonging, confidence, curiosity and relationship quality.Lake said the report’s idea of an “ambidextrous” approach to AI came from an acknowledgement by the group that “we have to attend to the kids who are in our schools right now — and the teachers,” she said. “We have to use whatever technologies are available to make things better, but we also have to make investments in big, really different whole-school designs.”Those could include not just better assessments but ways to help teachers provide “rigorous personalization grounded in the science of learning.”Districts could create classrooms with multiple adults working in teams based on their expertise. And AI could enable schools to match students to internships and other experiences, handling administrative tasks so humans can focus on relationships.Lake said the group that met in November kept coming back to one idea: keeping an eye on both the future of school and the reality of the schools we already have.“A lot of times when we have these conversations about AI and the future of schooling, it feels very floaty and abstract,” she said. “So I really appreciated that the fellows had a vision to connect the here-and-now to what kids need to know and [should] be able to do in the future. That feels really important for us all right now.”This story was produced by The 74 and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	10 recession-proof business ideas 10 recession-proof business ideasWhile a recession can be a challenging time for many businesses, some of them are able to thrive and even grow when the economy slows. These businesses are considered recession-proof, and now may be a good time for aspiring entrepreneurs to take a closer look.Not only do they provide goods and services that can prosper during tough times, but recession-resistant businesses also offer ideas and strategies that may help existing companies weather an economic downturn.SoFi highlights qualities of recession-proof businesses, plus 10 types of businesses suited to withstand economic dips.Characteristics of Businesses That Survive DownturnsWe hear the word “recession” a lot these days, but what is a recession exactly? In short, it’s a prolonged period of declining economic activity during which employment may go up, inflation often rises, and consumer spending goes down. Businesses that survive this kind of economic slowdown typically have specific qualities that allow them to navigate uncertain conditions. Those characteristics include:Flexibility: The ability to pivot and adjust to current market and business conditions is a key feature of companies that survive challenging times. Rather than continuing to do business as usual, they focus on the economic realities and listen to what their customers are telling them.For instance, if consumers are cutting back on discretionary items, like home decor, and doubling down on the things they really need, like groceries, recession-proof businesses will make it a point to give them what they need at a reasonable price. Financial preparation: As a business owner, being prepared financially for whatever might come your way is always a good strategy, no matter what shape the economy is in. And it’s vital when a recession hits. If you have a solid budget in place, low overhead costs, a plan for repaying your startup business loan, and an emergency fund you can tap if necessary, you’ll generally be better able to maintain a positive cash flow during times of economic crisis. Consumer demand: In a recession, inflation may cause prices to rise and unemployment to go up. At that point, consumers typically cut back on spending because they’re worried about money. Businesses that are inflation-proof sell goods and services that people always need, even when finances are tight. That’s an area to explore when you’re starting a business.Why Certain Industries Thrive During Economic HardshipBusinesses that grow during economic downturns have seemingly cracked the code on making money even when the outlook is bleak. So, how do they do it? They deal in goods and services that are necessities, and they are strategic about the price point.For example, recession-resistant businesses may offer more affordable prices on sought-after goods and services than their competitors do. Or they might sell staples that are always in demand like groceries, soap, or paper towels. They may also provide a service consumers can’t do without, such as home or auto repairs.Settling on a good business idea when you’re starting out, including picking an industry that is always needed, despite what the economy is doing, can be a key factor in your success.Top 10 Recession-Proof Business IdeasThe businesses that thrive during a recession have several characteristics in common: They make consumers’ lives easier, they satisfy a need, and they help customers make the most of their money. Here are 10 standout ideas to explore.1. Mobile Auto Repair ServiceFor most people, cars are critical for getting to work, going to the store, and getting around in general. And when our vehicle breaks down, it needs to get repaired as soon as possible, even during a recession. A mobile auto repair service does that — and also delivers the repair person right to the motorist, wherever they are. If a driver breaks down on the side of the highway, a mobile repair service can give them emergency help to get their vehicle up and running again.Business bonus points: During a recession, people are more likely to hang onto their current car rather than buy a new one. Older cars are more likely to need repairs, which increases the need for mobile auto repair services.In addition, overhead costs for mobile auto repair services tend to be low, since no building (or rent or mortgage) is required.2. Healthcare Staffing AgencyThe healthcare field is projected to be one of the fastest-growing industries in the country through at least 2033, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This growth is driven by an aging U.S. population and an increase in chronic disease. Plus, people of all ages get sick or become injured no matter what the economy is doing. Healthcare is a must for most of us.You don’t have to be a doctor to launch a healthcare staffing agency. Supplying medical professionals is a way to fill an ongoing need and a shortage in the market. Good healthcare workers, such as nurses, are always in demand. That makes a healthcare staffing agency that supplies qualified professionals to those who need them, a business that can flourish in tough economic times.Business bonus points: As more older people are living at home longer, they may require at-home care, including healthcare, which a staffing agency can help supply.3. Budget Grocery Delivery ServiceGroceries are the ultimate necessities — everyone has to eat. And when the economy is in a downturn, people tend to cut back on dining out and cook at home more. That means grocery items may be in even greater demand during a recession.Food delivery services are a thriving business. In 2025, the grocery delivery business is projected to generate $327.72 billion with an annual growth rate of 8.29%, according to the global data platform Statista.During a recession, budget-conscious shoppers will be looking for grocery items on sale. Yet because they may need more groceries than usual for all the cooking they’re doing, they may not have time to go to the store themselves on a regular basis. That’s why a budget grocery delivery service can be a good recession-proof business. It saves people time and money by doing the shopping for them and delivering the groceries to their door.Business bonus points: The ability to compare grocery prices online can help consumers find bargains during a recession, which could make budget grocery delivery with its online platforms even more popular.4. Debt Consolidation and Credit CounselingIndividuals with a bachelor’s degree in business or finance might want to consider becoming a credit and debt counselor. This type of business often sees a surge in demand when the economy dips, as money becomes tighter and people struggle to pay their bills.More people are dealing with debt. In late 2024, Americans’ household debt, which includes mortgages, credit cards, car loans and student loans, reached a record high of $18.04 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Delinquencies for credit cards, car loans, and student loans are on the rise.A debt and credit counseling company is not only recession-proof, but it might see a boom in business as the economy weakens. And no office is required: You can work from home, counseling people to manage their finances, set up a budget, and repay their debt through consolidation or other strategies. Although certification is not required, you can take classes to become a certified debt and credit counselor.Business bonus points: In a recession, the need for debt consolidation and credit counseling is likely to grow.5. IT Support for Remote WorkersApproximately 35.5 million people work remotely at least some of the time, according to 2024 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Remote workers rely on technology to get their jobs done, which means they will likely need IT support services. That’s in addition to the many businesses without their own in-house IT department that require IT support to keep their operations running smoothly.If you have a degree in computer science or information technology, or previously worked for a corporate IT department, starting an IT support business could be a move to consider. You can offer a broad-based IT support business that covers everything, or you can provide specialized support in certain areas such as cybersecurity, software installations and updates, or computer repair.Business bonus points: IT services are always in demand, even during a recession. Additionally, if the recession leads to layoffs, more people may go freelance and work from home, which could result in an increased demand for IT support.6. Consignment and Thrift StoreWhen people have less money to spend, they typically cut back on buying luxuries, but they still need things like staples, clothing, certain household items, and even beauty products. Consignment shops and thrift stores tend to thrive during recessions since consumers are looking to pay less for their purchases. In fact, some experts project that the thrift store industry will grow to $74 billion by 2029.Secondhand shopping is already on the rise. A 2025 report by Capital One Shopping Research found that 33% of all clothing and apparel purchased in the U.S. over the past year was secondhand. And according to a March 2025 report from ThredUp, an online consignment and thrift store, 59% of consumers said they would choose more affordable options, such as shopping secondhand, if new government policies like tariffs and trade made apparel more expensive. For those interested in starting a retail business, a consignment or thrift store might be a smart recession-resistant choice.Business bonus points: During a recession, some people may be especially motivated to donate or sell their clothing through consignment and thrift shops, which can give store owners a steady supply of inventory to help drive traffic and sales.7. Property Management ServicesThere’s often an increase in the number of renters during a recession, as buying a house becomes financially out of reach for more and more people. As a result, more property management services may be needed. These businesses deal directly with tenants and real estate agents, collect rent, handle maintenance and repairs, and do property upkeep, among other things.Just be sure to check into the rules regarding property management in your state. Many states require property management companies to be licensed by the local real estate board.Business bonus points: Besides potentially thriving in a recession, property management services also tend to do well in a good economy, since more apartments are typically built when the market is flourishing.8. Career Training and Resume ServicesWhen the economy is in a downturn, helping people train for and apply for a new job can be a rewarding line of work. Unemployment often goes up, along with layoffs, as a recession takes hold, and more people are usually looking for work. For example, in the Great Recession, approximately 8.7 million jobs were lost in the U.S. between December 2007 and February 2010.People hunting for jobs during a down market may need help updating and fine-tuning their resumes to make themselves stronger candidates for employment. Or they might be switching their career path to move into a field that’s growing and hiring, and they may need training in that area.Entrepreneurs who are good writers or have a background in human resources may be well positioned to start a career training and resume services business.Business bonus points: You can work out of your home without having to rent office space and incur related expenses.9. Home and Small Business Security SystemsKeeping homes and offices secure is always important, and in a recession, some homeowners and businesses may feel an increased desire to protect and secure their property.Entrepreneurs launching a security systems service can specialize in home or business security. They may perform such jobs as installing alarm systems and cameras, providing security guards, and for some businesses, safeguarding confidential or proprietary information and cybersecurity.Business bonus points: Starting a security business during a downturn can be a way to build a trusting relationship with clients that could last long after a recession is over.10. Virtual Bookkeeping ServicesThe need for bookkeeping services is constant, even during a recession. Companies need to make payroll, meet their budgets, and comply with financial regulations all the time — which is why virtual bookkeepers that provide these services can thrive.In fact, it may be more cost-efficient for businesses to hire a virtual bookkeeper than to have a full-time bookkeeper on staff, especially during a recession, which could create a greater demand for these services.Business bonus points: When a recession hits, businesses tend to pay even greater attention to their finances. They may be looking for ways to save money, maximize tax refunds, and ensure they don’t go over budget. Virtual bookkeeping services can do all that and more.Getting Started During Economic UncertaintyStarting a business in a time of economic uncertainty can be challenging, but it is possible. In order to be successful, a business owner needs to choose the right kind of business — one that supplies goods and services people need in any economy.Do some research to make sure there’s a market for your business, and then come up with a solid business plan. Think about who your target customer is and how you’ll reach them, and also how you’ll price what you’re selling. Estimate your startup business costs to figure out how much money you’ll need to launch your company. In addition, determine how you’ll structure the business, how it will be run, and what you want to achieve.You may consider having a professional, such as an accountant, review your business plan to make sure your projections are on target and that you haven’t forgotten something important, or overestimated or underestimated certain costs. You could also sign up for mentoring sessions with the Small Business Administration’s SCORE program of retired professionals.Funding Options During Tight Credit MarketsThen comes one of the most critical aspects of starting a business — securing financing for it. Credit markets typically tighten up during a recession, but there are still ways to get the funding you need. In addition to tapping into your personal savings, consider these options.Business loans. Securing a small business loan through a bank, an online small business lender, or a credit union is one method to explore. There are different kinds of small business loans, and each one has different interest rates and repayment terms, so you’ll likely want to shop around to find the best fit.Business lines of credit. A business line of credit is another way to get funding. It works similar to a credit card — an individual gets revolving credit up to an approved limit rather than a lump sum. They make payments based on the amount they borrow, and interest is charged on what they owe.Loans for equipment. If you need to buy equipment or tools for your business — if you’re starting a mobile auto repair shop, say — equipment financing can help you procure what you need. Depending on the type of loan you get, the equipment you purchase could act as collateral for the loan.Friends and family. Ask your relatives and friends if they can chip in to help with startup funding. For example, they could loan you money through a family loan that you repay over time. Or, they might opt to invest in the business.Crowdfunding. Some startups use crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo to get their financing off the ground. Through these platforms, individual investors typically each contribute small amounts. Having a solid business plan and an innovative idea can help attract investments.The TakeawayCertain types of businesses are able to thrive and grow, even in a shrinking economy. What makes them recession-proof includes such factors as the ability to be flexible and adapt to changing market conditions, responding to and pivoting to meet customer demands, and keeping their business costs and operating expenses low.While securing funding for a startup business can be especially challenging in times of economic uncertainty, there are numerous options small business owners can explore to get the funds they need. This includes small business loans, business lines of credit, loans from family and friends, and using their personal savings.FAQWhat makes a business truly recession-proof?Recession-proof businesses have several distinct qualities. They are generally flexible and adjust their pricing and practices to different market conditions; they keep their overhead costs low and stick to a budget; and they are responsive to customer demand, changing products, tactics, or pricing as needed.Why are some businesses more recession-resistant than others?Some businesses are more recession-proof than others because they provide essential goods or services consumers need, even in a down economy, at affordable prices. In addition, certain types of businesses may find a greater demand for their services in a recession, such as consignment and thrift shops, and credit counseling.Which recession-proof businesses can be started from home?Recession-proof businesses that can be started from home include credit counseling, virtual bookkeeping, and IT support service businesses for remote workers.Are franchise opportunities good recession-proof investments?Whether a franchise opportunity is a good recession-proof business depends on the industry the franchise is in. Industries that provide something people need and offer good value for the price they charge tend to weather recessions well. Examples include franchises in health care, childcare, and budget groceries.Are service-based businesses more recession-proof than product-based ones?Businesses that provide essential services may be more recession-proof than product-based businesses. One reason for this is that the services they provide to consumers are often essential, such as childcare or health care or IT support. No matter the state of the economy, the need for these services remains.In addition, the startup costs for service-based businesses are typically lower than for product-based businesses, which means they don’t require as much capital to launch. Service-based businesses can start small and generally don’t require a lot of equipment or products. They can often be run from the business owner’s home without the need for office space.This story was produced by SoFi and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	The post-tax pivot: How smart businesses turn April cash crunches into growth catalysts The post-tax pivot: How smart businesses turn April cash crunches into growth catalystsFor the majority of small business owners, April comes with a familiar worry. Tax payments are about to go out the door, and cash reserves dip as a result. The natural instinct is to hunker down, cut back on spending, and wait for stabilization before continuing growth. However, 2026 isn’t shaping up as a year to be quite as cautious.The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was signed into law in July 2025, fundamentally rewrites the incentives small businesses can receive. The legislation restored complete bonus depreciation, more than doubled the standing Section 179 expensing limit, made the Qualified Business Income deduction permanent, and reversed an unpopular requirement mandating research and development costs be spread across five years. Altogether, these changes mean that the dollars your business invests can reduce your taxable income immediately.This timing matters. Tax deductions free up investable capital and, when combined with smart receivables management, the post-tax period can become one of the most powerful windows in the calendar year to fund your growth. Gateway Commercial Finance, an invoice factoring company, has broken down the specifics of these benefits from leading sources, including NerdWallet, Bipartisan Policy Center, the IRS, Thomson Reuters, and more, to show how to build a practical framework for investing in your business after tax season.The new tax landscape: What changed and why it mattersThe One Big Beautiful Bill Act didn’t just extend a few provisions. It permanently restructured the tax environment for small and mid-sized businesses in ways that have direct implications for when you should be investing. The four changes most relevant center around bonus depreciation, Section 179 expensing, the QBI deduction, and R&D expensing.100% bonus depreciation permanently restoredUnder the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, 100% bonus depreciation was always on borrowed time. The deduction was scheduled to be phased down by 20 percentage points each year until 2027, when it would be fully eliminated. By 2026, businesses were looking at about a 20% deduction, but the One Big Beautiful Bill Act reversed that entirely.As outlined by BDO U.S.A., 100% depreciation is now permanently restored for qualified property acquired and placed into service after Jan. 19, 2025.This means that businesses can deduct the full cost of eligible equipment, including machinery, vehicles, computer hardware, software, and qualifying improvements in the first year rather than spreading those deductions across the asset’s useful life.Under the prior rules, a business that was investing $500,000 in qualifying equipment would have been limited to a $100,000 first-year deduction. Under the new law, however, the entire $500,000 is deductible in Year One. The new rule requires that both the acquisition date and the place-in-service date must fall on or after Jan. 19, 2025, for the full rate to apply.If you had projects already underway before that date, they may still qualify for individual components through component election, so speak with your business tax advisor.Section 179 expensing has been dramatically expandedSection 179 has long been the workhorse deduction for smaller businesses that are making capital investments. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act supercharged it further. The maximum deduction has more than doubled, rising to $2.5 million from $1.5 million starting last year, with the phase-out threshold increasing from roughly $3.1 million to $4 million.Taking inflation adjustments into account, this sets the deduction limit at approximately $2.56 million with the phase-out beginning at $4.09 million. This limit means that a business can invest roughly up to $6 million in equipment annually and still qualify for a partial Section 179 deduction.Section 179 is a particularly valuable tool for property types that may not be eligible for bonus depreciation. This could be applicable to roofs, fire protection systems, HVAC systems, and more. It also behaves differently from bonus depreciation in a few ways. This deduction is limited to business taxable income, meaning it can’t be used to create a loss, and the business must apply it before bonus depreciation.QBI deduction made permanentThe Qualified Business Income deduction, originally introduced by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, was perhaps the most significant ongoing tax break for pass-through business owners. It was originally scheduled to go away entirely at the end of 2025, which made multiyear planning a challenge.The QBI deduction has now been made permanent, per the IRS, allowing eligible pass-through business owners to deduct 20% of their qualified business income from their personal taxable income. The deduction percentage may have remained the same as it was, but the legislation did expand the income thresholds at which the limitations started to kick in. This allows more business owners to be eligible for the deduction.From a real dollar perspective, take a pass-through business generating $100,000. Under this rule, it can deduct up to $20,000 in qualified business income, effectively reducing its owner’s taxable income to $80,000. Knowing the deduction is now permanent can help business owners start to plan long-term.R&D expensing immediate deductions restoredFinally, R&D expensing policies hit businesses hard when the rules changed back in 2022. Under this, businesses were suddenly required to capitalize their domestic R&D expenses and amortize them over a five-year basis.Companies across the tech, manufacturing, software development, and life sciences spaces felt this impact particularly hard. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act repealed this requirement through the new section 174A. Starting with tax years beginning after December 31, 2024, under IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-28, domestic R&D expenses are once again fully deductible in the year they’re incurred.As outlined further by a Thomson Reuters analysis, small businesses with average annual gross receipts of $31 million or less may be able to get further relief. These businesses may elect to apply the change retroactively to tax years 2022 through 2024 by filing amended returns. All this is to say that businesses that overpaid taxes due to the forced amortization rule may be sitting on unclaimed refunds, which could otherwise be redeployed into the business.How tax benefits interact with cash flow timingReceiving benefits during tax season is one thing, but understanding how it directly ties into cash flows is another. Developing this understanding starts with identifying the common post-tax cash flow gap.The mechanics are fairly straightforward: Federal and state tax payments leave your business, often in significant sums, while receivables continue to flow in normally. Given the rapid reduction in cash, coupled with standard receivable turn, cash reserves are inevitably compressed, and available working capital is reduced.The Federal Reserve released its 2024 Small Business Credit Survey, which outlined just how widespread this problem is. Among small employer firms, 51% cited uneven cash flows as a financial challenge, and another 56% cited difficulties with paying operational expenses. Additionally, for the first time since 2021, more small businesses reported a decrease in revenue than an increase. Add on a large tax payment in April, and it’s easy to see why tight cash flows may be an issue.One thing many businesses fail to account for, though, is that the post-tax cash flow gap is predictable and can be overcome with proper planning.How deductions create investable capitalThe connection between tax deductions and investable capital flows in two directions. First, by reducing your taxable income, deductions also reduce your tax liability. For a business that invests $100,000 in qualifying equipment and claims a 100% bonus depreciation, for instance, they have now reduced their taxable income by $100,000. This results in $25,000 in tax savings.The second mechanism is planned deductions, which allow you to model out and anticipate your actual post-tax cash position before April. If you know exactly what your tax bill will be and how to pull your available levers, such as making a qualified purchase in Q1 that you know will reduce your taxable income, you can plan your Q2 cash position more accurately. These deductions don’t just reduce your bill, but also allow you to budget with precision.Protecting working capital while investingThe risk of post-tax investing should be obvious. If your cash is already compressed, adding further investment spending could push you into a working capital crisis quickly. Not all investments require full cash outflows at the time they generate their tax benefit, though. For instance, equipment purchases can be financed such that payments occur across multiple years, yet you can take the full deduction upfront. Section 179 explicitly allows for this scenario.The practical implication is that a business can reduce its Q1 tax liability through a financed equipment purchase, pay a manageable monthly installment throughout the year, and emerge from April with more working capital than if it had paid the full tax bill and purchased nothing.A post-tax growth investment frameworkWith the new tax landscape in place, the question for your business should shift from whether to invest in the post-tax season to how to structure that investment smartly. Here is a three-step practical framework for doing exactly that, developed by compiling advice from leading financial institutions, including PNC, BlueBridge Financial, PayProNext, and more.Step 1: Assess your post-tax financial positionBefore making any investment, it’s important that you get a clear picture of your current post-tax financial position. Account for this by taking your bank balance, less any remaining installment payments or upcoming obligations. Then, reduce by your open receivables aging bucket, any R&D overpayments, as applicable, and your business income projections for the next 90 days.Aim to complete this reconciliation around late March or early April ahead of the tax deadline. If you wait until after you’ve already paid your tax bill, that means you are looking at a depleted account and planning retroactively, rather than preemptively.Step 2: Map available tax benefits to investment opportunitiesSecond, given the current rules, not all investments you may make carry equal tax value. Equipment purchases made after the Jan. 19, 2025, deadline are eligible for 100% bonus depreciation, while R&D activity qualifying under Section 174A may be able to be backdated. The practical exercise is matching your planned investments to the available deduction mechanisms before the spending occurs.Work with your certified public accounting firm to model this out explicitly to ensure you are capturing the complete interaction between the 100% bonus depreciation, Section 179, and QBI deduction benefits.Step 3: Sequence investments against cash flowOne of the most common mistakes when taking part in post-tax investing isn’t choosing the wrong investment, but having poor timing. Even the right investment, made at the wrong point in your cash cycle, can create unnecessary stress for your business. As a rule of thumb, prioritize any investments that generate near-term revenue or cost savings over those that have longer payback periods.An equipment upgrade that immediately increases production capacity, for instance, typically pays itself back faster than an expansion initiative that will take over a year to ramp up. This principle is most important in Q2 when cash is typically the tightest.Practical takeaways to set up after tax seasonThe post-tax period doesn’t have to be a recovery phase. For businesses that understand how the One Big Beautiful Bill Act has altered 100% bonus depreciation, Section 179, QBI, and R&D rules, the economics of small business investment can be better structured to optimize cash flows. A dollar spent on qualifying equipment now generates far more immediate tax value than it did two years ago.The mechanics of turning all these benefits into real capital for your business are achievable, but planning before the April tax deadline is required. Ensure you sequence investments against actual cash flows, rather than accounting income, to reap these benefits and avoid stress when sending in your tax bill.This story was produced by Gateway Commercial Finance and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Tornado Watch issued for Quad Cities The Storm Prediction Center has now issued a Tornado watch for the Quad Cities area. Severe thunderstorms with all modes of severe weather are possible this afternoon and early evening. The biggest threats include damaging winds and a few tornadoes are possible too. Remember, a watch means conditions are favorable for severe weather to develop. [...]
	No new measles cases in South Carolina for a week, but CDC outbreak models warn about underreporting No new measles cases in South Carolina for a week, but CDC outbreak models warn about underreportingFor the first time since South Carolina’s record-breaking measles outbreak began last fall, the state has gone a full week without health officials learning of any new cases.It’s an encouraging sign that the outbreak — which has 997 documented cases — may be nearing its end. However, a report from outbreak modelers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, completed earlier this month, raises questions about how many measles infections have been going unreported.“There are likely some undocumented cases of measles in the affected region, raising the risk of spread to other populations in the region or nearby regions,” according to the March 3 risk assessment from the CDC’s Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics.The assessment says the extent of this underreporting is among several key uncertainties in predicting the future of the largest U.S. measles outbreak in decades.Before the outbreak can be declared over, there must be a period of 42 days with no new cases — an important sign that chains of transmission of the virus have been broken. The last day of the outbreak would be April 26 if no more cases are reported, Dr. Linda Bell, South Carolina’s state epidemiologist, said Wednesday.“We remain concerned about the possibility of unrecognized measles transmission, and we remain vigilant in monitoring any potential cases and spread,” Bell said.Bell noted that the CDC’s modeling report was completed three weeks ago.“Since that time, our measles case reports have continued to decline, our surveillance systems indicate this trend reflects a true decrease and not people avoiding health care,” Bell told Healthbeat.Tests of wastewater in the outbreak area are not detecting measles, nor is there any sign from people going to emergency departments for measles-like symptoms, she said.CDC officials did not grant interviews, and the agency’s written statements did not answer Healthbeat’s questions about information in the agency’s measles outbreak forecast report for South Carolina.Scott Thorpe, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Public Health Leadership, said he thinks the state health department is using the best data it has available in its announcements on March 20 and again March 24 that no new measles cases had been reported.“I think it’s very unlikely we’re at zero,” Thorpe said. “One of the really challenging, frustrating things about measles is that there absolutely can be cases we don’t catch, mild cases in particular.”The last time South Carolina’s health department reported zero measles cases was on Tuesday, Nov. 4, when the outbreak had just 34 cases. But by Friday, Nov. 7, a case was reported, department records show. State health officials provide case number updates only on Tuesdays and Fridays.Thorpe said he continues to be concerned about the upcoming spring break travel period increasing measles cases in the area. Many schools in Spartanburg County, where the outbreak is centered, are scheduled to be off for spring break during April 6-10.It’s a concern Bell has previously expressed as well. South Carolina’s outbreak surged after the winter holiday break period.‘Inconsistent’ or ‘sub-optimal’ compliance with isolation, quarantineOutbreak modeling teams at the CDC have produced three “outbreak scenario” assessments for the South Carolina measles outbreak, the first on Jan. 2, plus two updates on Jan. 20 and March 3.“Throughout the outbreak, our assessment consistently indicated that a larger outbreak, lasting at least six months, with some spread beyond the affected community, is the most likely outcome,” the agency’s outbreak modelers said in a March 6 web post that detailed their assessments.The South Carolina outbreak was first identified in early October with five known cases.As of early March, the CDC modelers said positive signs for the outbreak were that the rate of new cases was declining and that there were zero or minimal cases “outside of the affected community in the affected region” and that exposure settings affecting the “general population” had become limited or infrequent. Another positive sign: The number of households, schools, churches, and health care facilities with ongoing measles transmission was limited — a significant improvement from mid- to late January when the outbreak surged.But in addition to concerns about the likelihood of some underreporting of measles cases, the CDC modelers also wrote that compliance with stay-at-home recommendations by infected and exposed people was “sub-optimal or inconsistent,” and that there had only been low to moderate immunization with the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine among unvaccinated people in the area.“Currently, there is no evidence that unvaccinated residents of the affected region are receiving MMR vaccine in high enough numbers to substantially reduce transmission,” the CDC report said.However, Bell, who is leading South Carolina’s outbreak response, credits increased measles vaccination in recent months as a key reason the number of new measles cases being identified has slowed to a trickle throughout March and to zero reported in the past week. She said that in addition to people who got vaccinated, it is also important to consider that the nearly 1,000 people sickened with measles in the outbreak also acquired protective immunity to the virus through their infections. “That is a very risky way to get immunity,” she said.“I should also add that our disease containment strategies, our investigation of cases while they’re infectious, and making sure that people remain in isolation, and making sure that people have guidance about being in quarantine, also contributes to preventing ongoing transmission in communities,” Bell said.CDC forecasts note ‘close-knit’ low-vaccination communityThe CDC modelers noted that Spartanburg County, where the outbreak has been concentrated, “is home to a large, close-knit community of about 15,000 people with low vaccination coverage,” and that in schools countywide, just 88.9% of students are vaccinated against measles, compared to a statewide average of 93.7%.To stop measles from spreading within communities, 95% of the population needs to be vaccinated.Neither the CDC nor South Carolina’s state health department would identify the “close-knit” community referenced in the CDC outbreak modeling assessments. However, state health officials have previously acknowledged outbreak cases and multiple exposure incidents at Slavic-language churches whose members speak Ukrainian and Russian, as well as schools serving students from those communities.Vaccine hesitancy among Ukrainian and Russian-speaking communities in the United States has been fueled in part by historic distrust of the former Soviet government and its health system, health officials in other states have found.The CDC’s outbreak assessment updated on March 3 says that the “size of close-knit communities with low vaccination coverage” in the outbreak area, as well as their level of connection to other similar communities across South Carolina, is a key uncertainty in predicting the outbreak’s future path.The assessment notes that much is unknown about the extent of measles vaccination coverage in the region, “particularly among close-knit, under-vaccinated communities.” Use of school vaccination data can be used to help estimate community-wide immunization rates, the report said, but rates vary widely in the region.Some of South Carolina’s earliest known outbreak cases and exposures involved Global Academy of South Carolina, a public charter school in Spartanburg whose founders are Ukrainian immigrants. Only 21% of Global Academy’s students were up-to-date on their school vaccinations, according to state data. Alison Young // Healthbeat One church, Way of Truth Church in Inman, S.C., was identified as the location of an outbreak exposure incident in early November that resulted in at least 30 measles infections during the weeks that followed, according to state outbreak updates. Over the Christmas holiday period, multiple Slavic churches were associated with measles cases and exposure incidents, according to state outbreak updates. School and church officials have declined or not responded to past interview requests.‘Intrusion into your life’ when families seek care for measlesAnother key uncertainty impacting the future of the outbreak, according to the CDC outbreak modelers, is how quickly people who are experiencing measles symptoms or who have been exposed get tested and seek health care.The report says “avoidance of testing or health care could give the impression that transmission is slowing when that is not the case.”The CDC outbreak modelers are not alone in their concern about the underreporting of measles cases in the South Carolina outbreak.Dr. Robin LaCroix, a pediatric infectious disease specialist with Prisma Health, one of the major health systems treating measles cases in South Carolina’s Upstate outbreak area, said earlier this month that underreporting is a “big concern.” LaCroix noted the potential “intrusion” of public health investigations after health care providers notify health officials, as required, about measles cases.“I think that we have captured only a fraction of the people who have become infected with measles because if you were not ill enough to seek medical care, you are never captured in the numbers that are reported, “ LaCroix told the Why Should I Trust You podcast.“When you began to see what happened when you sought medical care — you had a call from the DPH, who wanted to know everywhere you had been for the four days before you became ill, or your child became ill, and there was a lot of intrusion into your life and activities related to that,” said LaCroix.In addition, she said, an infected child’s school also would get reported to public health and other unvaccinated children who were exposed would be sent home for 21 days of quarantine.“There were big community consequences around coming forward that my child has measles, and so then you open yourself up for again some ostracization within the community, that you caused us to have to send all of our children home. So I do think that there is an underreporting,” LaCroix said.Prisma Health spokesperson Tammie Epps said LaCroix was unavailable for an interview with Healthbeat.While Bell said she remains concerned that there may be some unrecognized measles cases, if they are out there and aren’t seeking medical care, she doesn’t think there are currently many because there are no signs of them in wastewater testing and other surveillance systems.“We don’t see indications that there are large numbers of unrecognized measles cases because people are self-isolating,” she said.“No surveillance system captures 100% of cases,” Bell said, “but with a highly infectious disease like measles, if ongoing transmission were occurring from many unreported cases, it is more likely to be detected by at least one of these means in addition to provider reporting.”This story was produced by Healthbeat and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	The hidden reason your appliances wear out faster and cost more to run The hidden reason your appliances wear out faster and cost more to runA cloudy glass straight out of the dishwasher.A chalky ring around the faucet that keeps coming back.A showerhead that clogs faster than you can clean it.Many homeowners shrug these off as minor, if ongoing, annoyances. But they’re actually the initial signs of hard water, and they can point to something bigger happening behind the scenes—inside the appliances you rely on every day.The high mineral content that causes hard water and leaves a visible residue around faucets, fixtures and more can also build up inside water heaters, dishwashers and washing machines. Over time, that hidden buildup can make appliances work harder, use more energy and wear out faster.And it’s not just cosmetic—that hidden wear can come with a real price tag. According to water quality experts at Culligan, hard water-related costs can add up to more than $600 per year for average U.S. and Canadian households.Internal data from Culligan shows what using hard versus soft water could be costing you:Up to $682 per year in total household impact.Up to 50% shorter lifespan for washing machines and dishwashers.More than 20% more energy is needed for your gas water heater (about $115 annually).Up to 33% shorter water heater lifespan.What’s actually happening inside your appliancesHard water is simply water with high levels of calcium and magnesium. As water flows through your home, those minerals don’t just disappear—they stick around.Over time, they form a crusty buildup (often called limescale) around anything your water touches, including inside pipes and water-using appliances. You won’t always see it happening, but this damaging buildup can coat heating elements, clog small openings and interfere with the parts that keep everything running efficiently.As that buildup grows, appliances often need more energy to do the same job. At the same time, internal components experience more strain, which can lead to breakdowns or shorter lifespans.Research from the Water Quality Research Foundation has shown just how significant that difference can be. In testing, washing machines using hard water developed heavy scale buildup and required descaling to maintain performance, while those using soft water had little to no buildup.Why most homeowners miss the warning signsPart of the problem is that hard water doesn’t announce itself. It shows up in small, easy-to-ignore ways:Glasses that never quite look clean aren’t always recognized as a warning sign about your dishwasher.Washing machines and dishwashers that seem less effective may be blamed on age.Energy bills that slowly creep up may be chalked up to seasonal changes.Because the effects build gradually, the connection to water quality often goes unnoticed. By the time the problem becomes expensive enough to require attention, scale buildup may have been affecting appliance performance for years.The appliance that takes the biggest hitWater heaters are one of the clearest examples of how hard water can impact both performance and cost.Here’s why: When scale builds up on the parts responsible for heating water, it acts like insulation. That makes it harder for heat to transfer efficiently—so the system has to work longer and use more energy just to reach the same temperature.As noted above, internal data from Culligan shows that households using soft water can reduce gas water heater energy use by about 23%. In terms of dollars, these savings can add up to more than $1,100 over 10 years and more than $2,300 over 20 years.The long-term impact of shorter appliance lifespansHard water’s impact goes beyond energy use. Over time, the extra strain it causes on appliances can also contribute to more wear and tear, which can lead to costly repairs or even the need to replace the unit earlier than expected.According to internal Culligan data, compared to homes using hard water, in homes with soft water:Water heaters may last up to 33% longer.Washing machines may last up to 50% longer.Dishwashers may last up to 50% longer.Even small differences in lifespan can add up. Replacing major appliances sooner than expected can become a steady, ongoing expense—one that many homeowners don’t realize is connected to their water.What homeowners can do about itThe good news: This is a problem you can address.The best long-term fix for hard water is a water softener, which reduces the minerals that cause buildup in the first place. By tackling the issue at the source, homeowners can stop scale before it starts accumulating inside appliances.Over time, that can help improve efficiency, reduce strain on equipment and potentially lower repair and replacement costs.The bottom line: Protecting your appliances starts with your waterHard water might not seem like an urgent issue—but it can quietly take a big toll on your home.From higher energy bills to appliances that wear out sooner than expected, the impact adds up over time. And because much of the damage happens out of sight, it’s easy to miss until the costs become hard to ignore.Understanding what’s happening behind the scenes is the first step toward protecting the systems you depend on every day—and avoiding unnecessary expenses down the road.This story was produced by Culligan and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Modern Woodmen Park loses best ballpark top spot Modern Woodmen Park has been voted second for USA TODAY’s 10 BEST “Best Minor League Ballpark."
	EPA flags concerns about microplastics, pharmaceuticals in drinking water There's been a lot of public is concerned about health risks from the chemicals, especially from the Make America Healthy Again movement. The agency's move doesn't in itself guarantee regulation.
	EPA flags microplastics, pharmaceuticals as chemicals of concern in drinking water There's been a lot of public is concerned about health risks from the chemicals, especially from the Make America Healthy Again movement. The agency's move doesn't in itself guarantee regulation.
	EPA flags microplastics, pharmaceuticals as contaminants in drinking water There's been a lot of public is concerned about health risks from the chemicals, especially from the Make America Healthy Again movement. The agency's move doesn't in itself guarantee regulation.
	Taxpayer dollars flood pregnancy centers. Oversight hasn't followed. Taxpayer dollars flood pregnancy centers. Oversight hasn't followed.Crisis pregnancy centers have been the beneficiary of at least a half-billion dollars since the U.S. Supreme Court ended federal abortion protections in June 2022, a States Newsroom investigation found. The centers discourage women from seeking abortion and contraception, which medical experts say compromises public health.The patient came in with a belly full of blood, Dr. Leilah Zahedi-Spung recalled. Her pregnancy was ectopic, no longer viable, and could have killed her if left untreated. But when she went to a mobile pregnancy help center offering free care in an RV in St. Louis, she was told the pregnancy could be saved.By the time she saw Zahedi-Spung days later, her fallopian tube had ruptured.In North Lauderdale, Florida, Ieshia Scott was pregnant and in the throes of postpartum depression. She thought she’d arrived at an abortion clinic. She told the staff she might hurt herself if she had another baby. They told her God would give her strength.A woman and her partner in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, went to a pregnancy help center by mistake. When they made it to a Planned Parenthood clinic across the street, the pregnant patient handed Dr. Kristin Lyerly a copy of the sonogram. But the scan was not of her uterus. It was her bladder.All three patients had gone to crisis pregnancy centers, organizations that advertise free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds but dissuade women from pursuing abortions and contraceptive options. Since the U.S. Supreme Court ended national abortion access in June 2022, the centers have seen an infusion of taxpayer dollars in many Republican-led states. But medical experts have urged lawmakers to reconsider the state support, as the centers can endanger public health by “causing delays in accessing legitimate health care,” according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.States Newsroom conducted a 50-state investigation examining state and federal budgets, as well as the tax records of these organizations, finding that while the magnitude of public funding for them is growing, oversight is not.Twenty-one states funneled nearly a half-billion dollars, or $491 million, of taxpayer money to crisis pregnancy center organizations between fiscal years 2022 and 2025. That figure does not include millions some states diverted from federal programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and it does not include multimillion-dollar tax credit programs launched after federal protections for abortion rights were overturned. Kelcie Moseley-Morris // States Newsroom Nearly $1.3 billion in local, state or federal government grants were awarded to 1,259 crisis pregnancy centers in total between 2019 and 2024, according to States Newsroom’s analysis of tax records. The actual figure may be higher, as digital records are not comprehensive or entirely up to date.Yet that largesse hasn’t been matched by corresponding regulation. Oversight of taxpayer funding remains weak, either blocked by legislators or ignored by state agencies.The centers are most often faith-based nonprofits that say they provide much-needed support for pregnant clients at no cost. An estimated 2,633 crisis pregnancy centers were operating in the United States as of March 31, 2024, according to research from the University of Georgia.John Mize, CEO of Americans United for Life, argues that pregnancy centers are important for people who really don’t want an abortion, and for anyone who regrets their abortion to find support.“I am strongly of the opinion that most women that have abortions do it because they don’t feel like they have any other option,” Mize said.But critics and researchers say the pregnancy centers mislead potential clients about their services or pose as medical clinics despite lacking proper licensure. They sometimes promote treatments like abortion pill reversal, which is unproven and potentially dangerous.“Often, patients are lured in by this idea of getting free care,” said Dr. Rachel Jensen, Darney-Landy complex family planning fellow at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “It’s free, because it’s often subsidized by taxpayer dollars. Free health care sounds amazing. It should be available to all people. But the problem is, then, that the CPCs are unregulated — and they operate outside of ethical principles and best care practices.”Indiana state Sen. Shelli Yoder, a Democrat, said access to maternal health care in her state continues to decrease while support for crisis pregnancy centers increases. Indiana boosted its budget for the centers from $250,000 in 2021 to $2 million, then doubled it to $4 million by 2024. The state’s maternal mortality rate is among the worst in the country.“It’s not that these centers don’t serve a purpose. But they certainly are not a replacement for maternal health care, and they are not health care centers, and yet our state is using taxpayer money to fund them as if they are,” Yoder said. “And we are sending a message to moms, or to women, that they are health care centers, and they are not.”Zahedi-Spung was working an emergency room shift in 2019 at a St. Louis hospital, not too far from the pregnancy center housed in an RV and frequently parked in front of a Planned Parenthood clinic. She said she was horrified to learn the patient with the ruptured ectopic pregnancy had been told at the mobile crisis pregnancy center a few days before that it could be saved. A tubal ectopic pregnancy is never viable.Today, Zahedi-Spung works in Colorado as a high-risk OB-GYN. But that experience in the ER still haunts her.“They’re a private organization providing medical care without a medical license, so they are not liable for anything they tell anyone,” she said.Andrea Trudden, spokesperson for Heartbeat International, one of the largest pregnancy center networks in the U.S., said that as of 2025, more than 75% of Heartbeat affiliates offer medical services and are different from pregnancy resource centers, which offer parenting classes and material aid but not medical services.“Medical affiliates that provide limited obstetrical ultrasound or other services follow applicable state laws, professional standards, and clinical protocols,” Trudden said in a written statement.According to a report from the Charlotte Lozier Institute, 37% of 2,775 crisis pregnancy centers provided testing for sexually transmitted infections, and 29% provided STI treatment in 2024. The institute, which is the research arm of one of the largest anti-abortion policy groups, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, found that 81% of surveyed centers provided ultrasound services in 2024. The report notes that 28% of paid center staff have medical licenses, along with 12% of volunteers.The only option for milesIn North Florida’s largely rural Wakulla County, there are no full-time practicing OB-GYNs. Wakulla Pregnancy Center is in Crawfordville, the county seat of about 4,800 people. Many women in the area lack transportation, said the center’s director, Pam Pilkinton. They have to travel about 20 miles north to Tallahassee for prenatal care.Run by a local ministry, the center has a blue-and-white sign that advertises “Free Pregnancy Tests.” Inside, a cozy living room furnished with sofas leads to a counseling room and donation space, where moms peruse a range of free baby clothes and supplies. Most of the center’s clients have low incomes, and are on Medicaid or uninsured. Nada Hassanein // Stateline When Florida passed a six-week abortion ban in 2023, legislators simultaneously increased state funding for crisis pregnancy centers by 455% — from $4.5 million to $25 million. The following legislative session, they added another $4.5 million.The funds go to the Florida Pregnancy Care Network, which manages contracts with more than 100 crisis pregnancy centers across the state. The organization is required to report the amount and types of services provided and the expenditures to the governor and state legislature once a year. But it is not required to make any noncompliance findings public.The public money for centers in Florida doesn’t end there. Wakulla Pregnancy Center received a separate allocation in the 2025 budget of $136,000. According to the funding request, $60,000 is allocated for a building asbestos issue, and $58,000 pays for the salary and benefits of the executive director and client coordinator. The rest is for pregnancy tests, educational materials, ultrasound referrals and other supplies.But Pilkinton is clear about one point: The center does not provide medical care in this maternal health care desert.“We’re not a medical facility, and that is something that we let everyone know up front,” Pilkinton said. “We provide material support, education, information and peer counseling.”That doesn’t include practices like referring a patient to an OB-GYN for prenatal care after a positive test, for example, “because we’re not a medical facility,” she said.Wakulla County’s severe maternal hospitalization rates ranked among the worst in the state in 2023 and 2024.Like in other states, maternal health care has continued to flounder in Florida — and shortages are likely to worsen. Nearly half of the 1,500 OB-GYNs who responded to a state survey say they plan to stop delivering babies within the next two years.The money Florida allocated for pregnancy centers might have covered more maternity care across the state, said Democratic state Rep. Anna V. Eskamani.“We do need to strengthen our safety nets when it comes to supporting new moms," Eskamani said. “Instead of addressing those gaps and investing in those areas, we continue to dole out millions of dollars to these unregulated and often religiously affiliated anti-abortion centers that are not addressing any of these disparities.”In previous legislative sessions, Eskamani filed bills to repeal state funding and introduce regulation of existing centers. The bills have yet to receive a hearing, but she and her colleagues have filed them again.“These not-for-profit organizations run with very little federal or state oversight, and sometimes they don’t even have licensed medical staff on site,” she said. “At this point, it’s a blank check.”Big checks, little oversightMuch of the state funding for pregnancy centers did not exist before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision ended federal protections for abortion rights in June 2022.Conservative-led states — such as Texas — that already allocated tens of millions to pregnancy centers have doubled or tripled their budgets for pregnancy resource groups since 2022. In Missouri, lawmakers have budgeted nearly $50 million since fiscal year 2022 from the general fund and federal block grant dollars. Texas’ allocation ballooned from $140 million in fiscal years 2024 and 2025 to $180 million in 2026 and 2027.In southwest Missouri, Republican state Rep. Christopher Warwick’s support of the centers is a focus of his reelection campaign.“I think it’s important that we fund organizations that are willing to save life,” he said.Louisiana lawmakers directed $4 million from the state’s general fund to pregnancy centers for 2025, as part of its Pregnancy and Baby Care Initiative. But an audit found the state doled out the maximum amount per center allowed by state law — $100,800 — to most of the groups without requiring them to fully document how they spent it.Auditors were concerned Louisiana paid the centers more than the cost of the actual services provided.In Oklahoma, state auditors discovered in 2022 that an anti-abortion nonprofit called Oklahoma Pregnancy Care Network disbursed less than 7% of the $1.6 million it promised to nonprofits under the state’s Choosing Childbirth program. A month and a half before its contract was scheduled to end, the group had served 524 women, less than 6% of the 9,300 Oklahoma women it initially projected it would serve. An administrator with the nonprofit told The Oklahoman she was unaware there were problems.Despite those findings, state lawmakers later directed nearly $18 million — a quarter of the state health department’s entire budget — toward Choosing Childbirth through November 2027. More than $4 million of it went to the Oklahoma Pregnancy Care Network. The network did not respond to States Newsroom’s requests for comment.Inner workingsLyerly, the OB-GYN in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, said the couple with the mislabeled sonogram came into her Planned Parenthood clinic in the early months of 2022. It wasn’t uncommon for patients with appointments at Planned Parenthood to accidentally go to the crisis pregnancy center across the street. This couple sought an abortion, she said, but came in with the ultrasound image of the woman’s bladder rather than her uterus. On top of the mislabeled ultrasound, they felt misled, because they were told the pregnancy was just a few weeks along when it was much more advanced.“This was a challenging situation for them, was emotional and frustrating and upsetting to them, and it was so unnecessary,” said Lyerly. She stopped providing abortions in Wisconsin later that year when a state law banning the procedure went back into effect after the Dobbs decision.Many centers are affiliated with umbrella organizations, including Care Net, Heartbeat International (formerly Alternatives to Abortion International) and National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, but often do not disclose that connection on their website. The parent companies provide guidance for operations, including yearly conferences, along with training for limited ultrasounds and other services. Training and funding for many of these centers’ ultrasound programs also come from national religious groups like Focus on the Family and the Knights of Columbus.Heartbeat International is the largest of the three, with more than 4,000 affiliated service providers across the U.S. and in more than 100 countries, according to Trudden.Trudden said Heartbeat International offers professional training and practical resources for affiliates, who determine their own governance, leadership and location and must agree to a set of standards also shared by Care Net and the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates. Those standards include practicing honesty and confidentiality with clients and complying with all legal and regulatory requirements.Some pregnancy centers are staffed with licensed professionals trained in sonography. The National Institute of Family and Life Advocates says it has trained more than 6,000 health care professionals “in the medical and legal ‘how to’s’ of limited obstetrical ultrasound.” But at its national conference last year, leaders discouraged centers from performing ultrasounds on women whom they suspect have ectopic pregnancies to avoid liability. The guidance came in the wake of a lawsuit against a Massachusetts center, in which the plaintiffs alleged that center staff failed to diagnose an ectopic pregnancy that ruptured, prompting emergency surgery. The clinic reached a settlement with the patient.Some centers offer more medical services, like prenatal support and testing and treatment for STIs, such as Idaho’s Stanton Healthcare, which is accredited by the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care and does not receive any public funding.“We have caught ectopic pregnancies. … I can think of three in the last eight months off the top of my head,” said Angela Dwyer, Stanton's director of client services. Otto Kitsinger // States Newsroom But advocacy groups such as Campaign for Accountability have raised alarms about how many clinics do not have to follow federal health privacy laws, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPAA.Clinics that offer free services and do not bill insurance face no penalty for disclosing a client’s information.In contrast, Jessica Scharfenberg, CEO of Healthfirst Network in central Wisconsin, said if any of her 10 reproductive health clinics violated HIPAA, they would face steep federal fines and possible jail time for staffers.“If my entity broke HIPAA, we would have federal consequences, even though we also have an internal policy for it,” Scharfenberg said. “They have their internal policies. They break HIPAA, there's no consequences for it.”The websites of some centers give the appearance of being HIPAA compliant even though they aren’t, States Newsroom has reported.The other two main umbrella organizations did not respond to multiple requests for comment by email and phone.‘So much help’In North Lauderdale, Ieshia Scott would stare at her 6-month-old, unable to hold the baby when she cried. Scott, who also had a 10-year-old, felt overwhelmed by a constant cloud of stress and sadness, all while trying to keep up with college classes.When she found out she was pregnant again, Scott searched for an abortion clinic in the city, and a pregnancy resource center came up in the search results. That 2018 visit would last nearly three hours, during which she fielded dozens of questions about why she wanted an abortion. Scott had suicidal thoughts and was depressed but felt totally unheard.“I really was disregarded,” said Scott, now 36. “I was actually saying to her, like — ‘I don't know, I might hurt myself, I might hurt the baby.’”The center didn’t refer her to a psychiatrist, therapist or OB-GYN. The staff member instead reminded her of the Ten Commandments.“I’m literally telling her, I can’t — I can't do it. And she was like, ‘You can, you can. And there’s so much help.’”Mental health is a contributing factor in about 23% of the nation’s maternal deaths, reports from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show.Scott eventually went to a clinic to get the care she needed. But she worries for women who can’t.More than a dozen states passed abortion bans after Dobbs, and efforts continue nationwide to dismantle what access remains. Several states with abortion bans — including Missouri, South Carolina and Texas — have moved to cut Planned Parenthood out of state Medicaid programs as well, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that excluding the organization did not violate Medicaid’s provision requiring freedom of choice in providers. Florida legislators are also discussing cutting Planned Parenthood out of the state Medicaid program.In 2025, at least 51 Planned Parenthood locations closed or limited medical services after losing state and federal support. Those communities lost access not only to abortion services but also to other reproductive and primary medical care. Independent clinics such as Maine Family Planning stopped offering primary care services for about 600 patients because of a funding loss of about $1.9 million, even though none of the Medicaid dollars were used for abortion.‘Government handouts’Lawmakers are not only opening public coffers to provide direct financial support to pregnancy centers, but they’re also creating tax breaks, drawing on federal sources and shifting funds meant to help low-income families to aid the anti-abortion organizations — with few regulations.Some legislators have resisted stronger oversight.In Missouri, state Rep. Warwick opposed a colleague’s suggestion to require the centers to report how they spend their donations in a tax credit program, saying he wanted to limit bureaucracy. He said in a February 2025 legislative hearing that the tax credit keeps the state from having to “verify what programs work.”“I don’t think they’re funded enough to be able to mishandle their money,” he told States Newsroom in December. “At least not the ones I’m familiar with.”Warwick proposed raising the tax credit for pregnancy center donations from 70% to 100% in 2025, meaning someone donating to a pregnancy center could reduce their state tax bill by the exact amount donated.The credits that Missourians redeemed shot up from about $2 million to an average of more than $7 million per year after lawmakers removed a cap on credits in 2021, according to a fiscal note attached to Warwick’s bill. State officials estimated a 100% tax credit just for pregnancy center donations would cost the state more than $10.7 million in the first year.Missouri also funnels more than $2 million per year in state and federal dollars to pregnancy resource centers and similar organizations through its Alternatives to Abortion program. That’s in addition to what the centers receive from Missouri’s federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families fund — $10.3 million in this fiscal year.Although Warwick’s 100% pregnancy center tax credit failed, he plans to try again in this year’s session. “I don’t think it (a 100% tax credit) would significantly hurt the state, especially when we’re talking about protecting life, protecting the birth of children,” he said.Nebraska Sen. Joni Albrecht, a Republican who also sponsored a six-week abortion ban, said the centers were a valuable investment when she sought to create a $10 million tax credit program that was revised down to $1 million in 2024.Of the 13 pregnancy centers approved for tax credits in Nebraska, four provided less than $150,000 in services, according to tax returns, and one had three consecutive state audit reports with findings of deficiencies in controlling and complying with federal grant funding requirements.In Montana, a state without an abortion ban, Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte found another way to give taxpayer money to pregnancy centers by donating a portion of his annual salary. In 2020, he pledged to give his salary to nonprofit organizations and charities, and has for the past three years included pregnancy centers in that list for a total of more than $60,000.Idaho state Sen. Ben Adams, a Republican who sponsored a bill to establish a grant fund of $1 million for crisis pregnancy centers in 2025, told States Newsroom he felt it was important to put resources into helping people choose to have a baby.“We have, for a very long time, primarily through the federal government, essentially funded abortion through funding for Planned Parenthood and all these different organizations,” Adams said. “We say we’re going to restrict a woman’s access to abortion and that we’re pro-life. Well then, we actually have to be investing in those folks who are choosing life and show them that we mean it when we say we want them to choose life.”For decades, the Hyde Amendment, a provision Congress has renewed annually, has prohibited the use of federal funding for abortions, except in cases of rape, incest and to save the mother’s life.Idaho is one of a few states with an abortion ban that isn’t providing government support for crisis pregnancy centers. Adams’ bill failed by one vote in committee and faced opposition from many constituents, including a former board chairman of a crisis pregnancy center in Idaho who said subsidizing nonprofit entities with taxpayer dollars is not the proper role of government.“Providing taxpayer funds on either side of this moral question is inappropriate,” said John Crowder in his testimony to the legislative committee, prefacing his comments by saying he is a Christian who believes life begins at conception. “Such decisions to lend financial support should be left to churches and individuals, not the government.”Based on his knowledge of the finances of that center, Crowder said, it was clear they could meet the goals of their mission with the donations they received and “without government handouts.”Stateline reporter Amanda Watford contributed to this report.This story is part of a reporting fellowship sponsored by the Association of Health Care Journalists and supported by the Commonwealth Fund.METHODOLOGY: To identify government grant funding received by nonprofit crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), a team of States Newsroom reporters used multiple data sources. Reporters reviewed state and federal budgets and legislation to identify public funding allocated to CPCs between 2019 and 2025, with a particular focus on the period following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in June 2022, as well as in prior years, as applicable. The team did not include federal funding from sources such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families in the nationwide analysis, and state tax credit programs were also excluded.Data reporter Amanda Watford cleaned and analyzed a publicly available dataset of CPCs originally collected by the nonprofit advocacy group Reproductive Health and Freedom Watch. Organizations that appeared to be permanently closed or did not report enough revenue to file a full IRS Form 990 were removed from the States Newsroom analysis. Watford extracted filings from ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer for about 2,000 organizations, covering 2019 to 2025. Government grant totals were only available for 217 organizations for 2023 and 2024 due to data infrastructure limitations. A separate analysis using the GivingTuesday 990 database captured basic financial and government grant data for 1,243 organizations between 2019 and 2023. Watford combined the 2019-2023 GivingTuesday data and 2023-2024 ProPublica data. The total amount of government funding provided to CPCs was calculated for each year, yielding a grand total of nearly $1.3 billion across 1,259 CPCs between 2019 and 2024.This analysis is not comprehensive. Some IRS Form 990 filings were unavailable digitally, and some organizations did not report any government grant funding, so grant funding reported outside the available electronic filings was not fully captured. Financial information available through IRS Form 990 filings is self-reported by organizations to the IRS and is not independently audited. Additionally, there is a lag between when organizations are expected to file returns and when filings are publicly available. Due to these factors, the States Newsroom findings likely undercount the total amount of public, government funding directed to CPCs. An estimated 2,633 CPCs were operating in the United States in 2024, according to research from the University of Georgia.This story was produced by States Newsroom and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Attorney General Pam Bondi out at DOJ President Trump has announced that Attorney General Pam Bondi is out at the Justice Department. Her departure comes amid simmering frustration over her leadership and handling of the Epstein files.
	Regaining Control: How One Woman with Parkinson’s Disease Keeps Moving Thanks to Deep Brain Stimulation (NAPSI)—It all started about 15 years ago with a strange vibration in her left leg.“I thought it was nothing,” recalls Suzanne Friedman, a South Florida mom who at the time was in her 40s and busy juggling a career and family.She mentioned the vibration to her physician during an annual check-up, thinking it was probably just a pinched nerve. Instead, her physician asked a question that stopped her cold: What about Parkinson’s disease?“What?” Suzanne remembers thinking. “I was completely shocked.”A referral to a neurologist soon followed, along with an official diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, news which sent Suzanne into what she describes as a yearlong tailspin.“You don’t expect to go into the doctor’s office and walk out with a life-changing diagnosis,” Suzanne added.April is recognized as Parkinson’s Awareness Month, a time to spotlight the experiences of the 1.1 million Americans living with the disease and raise awareness of potential treatment options1. For many people, treatments revolve around medications. In Suzanne’s case, her journey eventually led her to deep brain stimulation.Living Around the MedicationAfter the news of her diagnosis settled in, she did what many patients typically do: she pushed forward.Worried that her mobility would start to decline, Suzanne and her family traveled as much as possible before her symptoms worsened. For three years she was able to manage without medical intervention. When she finally started treatment with medications, relief came, but so did side effects.She developed dyskinesia, the uncontrolled movements that can develop after long-term use of medications that treat Parkinson’s.“My foot would just start tapping,” she said. “When I was nervous, it was worse.”She began living her life around her medication and dosing schedule.“I had to be so careful and watch every step,” she added. “I wasn’t enjoying life. I was suffering.” Some days the medicine worked; some days it didn’t. The unpredictability was crushing and emotionally draining.“I had no control. No consistency. I couldn’t go somewhere without worrying I suddenly wouldn’t be able to walk.”For years, Suzanne kept her diagnosis to herself—she didn’t even tell her own mother.“I couldn’t bring myself to tell people. I didn’t want them to freak out, because it freaked me out.”Before Parkinson’s disease, she described herself as “the party queen,” never missing an opportunity to socialize. Over time, she became less social and any kind of stress made her symptoms worse.Finding Another OptionWhen medication and other treatment options failed, she turned to late-night research and social media groups, which led her to something she hadn’t seriously considered yet: deep brain stimulation (DBS). Eager to learn more, she started reaching out to people who had undergone the procedure.“They all said it would have a positive impact,” she added.DBS isn’t a cure for Parkinson’s disease. The treatment works by sending mild electrical signals to a targeted portion of the brain through leads connected to a small, implanted device called a stimulator. These signals can help improve movement symptoms such as stiffness, tremors and slowness.When Suzanne’s doctor presented her with the various DBS treatment options, she chose Boston Scientific’s Vercise Genus™ Deep Brain Stimulation System. “I wanted the most up-to-date technology available, and I liked that it had a rechargeable battery,” she added. Suzanne began the process and had her DBS system implanted in 2018. Following the operation, she and her healthcare team worked together to fine-tune the DBS system, a painless process of making micro-adjustments to the electrical current to personalize her results.“As the doctor started programming, my daughter watched him turn off my Parkinson’s symptoms with a computer,” Suzanne recalls.Keep Moving to Keep MovingNearly 15 years after her initial diagnosis, she says you wouldn’t know she has Parkinson’s disease if you met her.“The biggest change is consistency,” she says. “I feel like I have more control. I don’t have to worry about going somewhere and not being able to walk after.”She walks three miles every day. She practices yoga. She plays cards with friends and works in the family business. Once a week, she attends Rock Steady Boxing, a non-contact fitness program designed for people with Parkinson’s disease that research suggests can help slow symptom progression. “If you want to walk, you have to walk,” she says. “You have to keep moving to keep moving.”Stories like this highlight why Parkinson’s Awareness Month matters: Raising awareness helps more patients and their families learn about symptoms, treatment options and supportive communities that can help them keep moving forward.Suzanne isn’t defined by her diagnosis. She is defined by motion—by miles walked, by punches thrown in a boxing class, by trips taken, by a life lived on her own terms. Learn MoreDBS has helped an estimated 244,000 people worldwide regain control of their movement and independence in daily life2. In recognition of Parkinson’s Awareness Month, patients and caregivers are encouraged to learn more about symptoms and treatment options.Visit DBSandMe.com to learn more about Parkinson’s disease and DBS therapy.Results from case studies are not necessarily predictive of results in other cases. Results in other cases may vary. You can talk to your doctor about the risks and benefits of deep brain stimulation and if it is an option for you. 1. Parkinson’s Foundation. Parkinson’s Disease Statistics. https://www.parkinson.org/understanding-parkinsons/statistics 2. Sandoval-Pistorius SS, Hacker ML, Waters AC, Wang J, Provenza NR, de Hemptinne C, Johnson KA, Morrison MA, Cernera S. Advances in Deep Brain Stimulation: From Mechanisms to Applications. J Neurosci. 2023 Nov 8;43(45):7575-7586. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1427-23.2023. PMID: 37940596; PMCID: PMC10634582.Word Count: 847
	US traffic fatalities: Where speeding and impaired driving pose the biggest risks US traffic fatalities: Where speeding and impaired driving pose the biggest risksWhen American roads are safest, a mix of enforcement, behavior change, and public awareness often gets the credit, but risky driving behaviors remain central drivers of deadly crashes. To better understand the human behaviors linked to traffic deaths nationwide, Recovery Law Center, a personal injury law firm, analyzed the latest available federal data on speeding‑ and impaired‑driving‑related fatalities to pinpoint where the greatest risks persist on U.S. roadways.Roadway deaths remain high despite recent declinesPreliminary estimates from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) project that around 39,345 people died in U.S. traffic crashes in 2024, marking a 3.8% decline from 2023 and the first time fatalities have fallen below 40,000 since 2019. However, the total number of deaths remains high compared to the decade before the COVID-19 pandemic.These declines reflect broad trends in traffic fatalities over recent years, but the scale of deadly crashes still eclipses other industrialized nations and underscores persistent dangers on American roads.Speeding: A leading contributing factorSpeeding continues to be a major risk factor in U.S. traffic deaths. According to the cited data from the Governors Highway Safety Association of Washington, about 29% of all traffic fatalities in 2023 were speeding‑related crashes, translating to roughly 11,775 deaths.While total traffic fatalities declined modestly from 2022 to 2023, fatalities tied to high‑speed crashes have remained stubbornly high, often outpacing declines seen in other crash categories.Speeding is often embedded in patterns of aggressive driving, including tailgating and failure to yield, which magnify crash severity.Which states have the highest speeding‑related fatality share? Recovery Law Center Speeding’s role in deadly crashes varies markedly across states: Oregon (64%), Hawaiʻi (58%), and Rhode Island (45%) were among the states with the highest proportion of traffic deaths linked to speeding in 2023. Conversely, Florida (10%), Kentucky (15%), and Mississippi (19%) had some of the lowest shares of speeding‑related fatalities relative to total traffic deaths.These disparities reflect differences in enforcement patterns, speed limit policies, road design, and driver behavior across the country.Impaired driving: Persistent deadly riskBesides excessive speed, impairment from alcohol and other substances remains a major factor in American traffic fatalities. Federal estimates for 2023 show 12,429 people died in crashes involving at least one alcohol‑impaired driver, representing about 30% of all U.S. traffic fatalities that year. On average, an alcohol‑impaired driving death occurred roughly every 42 minutes in 2023.Public health data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) corroborate the scale of the problem: In 2022, alcohol‑impaired crashes accounted for more than one‑third of all traffic deaths nationwide.When Do Impaired Crashes Spike?Fatalities linked to impairment tend to rise during holiday periods and weekends when social travel increases, a pattern reflected in NHTSA’s annual “Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over” enforcement campaigns, which step up patrols during high‑risk periods.Interaction between speed and impairmentEmerging analyses and federal safety messaging highlight the relationship between speeding and impaired driving, noting that drivers who exceed posted limits are more likely to also exhibit other risky behaviors (including alcohol impairment and failing to use restraints), which amplify crash severity.Although data collection methodologies vary, transportation safety research underscores that addressing one risky behavior often positively impacts others: A high‑speed driver who is also impaired is statistically more likely to be involved in a fatal crash than one exhibiting only a single risk factor.Risk patterns across the USGeographic and demographic variations shape where and how these risks manifest: States with higher rural mileage often report larger shares of speeding‑related deaths, partly due to higher posted limits and longer emergency response times. In contrast, impaired driving deaths disproportionately cluster in areas with limited public transportation options or where nightlife travel is common, especially during weekends and holidays.Federal safety officials continue to partner with state and local agencies to tailor enforcement strategies and public education campaigns to these nuanced state and regional patterns.Federal and community efforts to reduce fatalitiesIn response to these ongoing risks, the NHTSA and allied safety organizations are investing in multiyear strategies to reduce fatal crashes, including targeted enforcement campaigns, expanded impaired‑driving checkpoints, and awareness initiatives that emphasize the combined hazards of speeding and impairment.State legislatures and local enforcement agencies are also experimenting with aggressive driving laws and automated speed enforcement programs to change driver behavior, though their effectiveness varies by community context.Beyond the Numbers: What this means for road usersWhile overall traffic fatalities have shown signs of recent decline, the persistent roles of speeding and impaired driving highlight ongoing challenges in American road safety. Drivers, passengers, policymakers, and communities alike continue to grapple with how to encourage safer behavior, enforce meaningful penalties, and prioritize investments that protect all road users.This story was produced by Recovery Law Center and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	'I just bided my time, found a group that's magical': Brad Underwood leads Illini to Final Four Illinois' Brad Underwood coached for 26 years before landing his first Division I head coaching job. Now in Year 39, the well-traveled 62-year-old is finally heading to the Final Four, where the Fighting Illini meet UConn on Saturday. He's doing it in what he's long referred to as his dream job. In 2013 while in [...]
	Sell now or wait? 5 home seller fears in 2026, according to a survey of agents Sell now or wait? 5 home seller fears in 2026, according to a survey of agentsThousands of U.S. homeowners across the country have been holding off on making a move because the housing market keeps sending mixed signals.HomeLight’s Top Agent Insights & Predictions Survey for 2026 was fielded between Dec. 2 and Dec. 9, 2025, through an online poll of over 850 real estate agents across the country. Based on the survey, HomeLight has identified the top five home seller fears for 2026 and gathered expert tips on how you can overcome each one to increase your chances of a successful home sale.Fear No. 1: Selling for less than peak priceFor many homeowners, the hardest part of selling right now isn’t the transaction itself; it’s the emotional weight of feeling like they missed the market’s high point.“Sellers worry less about the price itself and more about the feeling that they ‘missed the peak,’” says Austin Moore, an agent in Longview, Texas. “It is an emotional hesitation. Even when their equity position is strong, they fear leaving money on the table compared to neighbors who sold at the top. The concern is not just price, it’s regret.”Others are grappling with shifting conditions after the ultra-competitive seller’s markets of recent years.“Sellers are concerned about getting top dollar in a declining market with fewer qualified buyers. But if a home sits on the market a long time, and a seller is reluctant to drop the price to gain more traction, they could be in a pickle,” explains Wanda Cox, an agent serving the Greater Tampa Bay, Florida, area. “Price drops may be necessary to win.”While price growth has slowed in many areas, that doesn’t necessarily mean values and list prices are falling sharply. In fact, J.P. Morgan Global Research predicts that U.S. house prices will remain flat in 2026, with demand slightly improving.In HomeLight’s survey, most agents agree that the market is normalizing and that realistic pricing is more important than ever.How to overcome itRather than focusing on what your home might have sold for at the peak, shift your attention to:Your net proceeds today, including built-up equity.Local market momentum, not national headlines.Accurate pricing, which agents say is the No. 1 factor in how quickly a home sells.Brandon King, an agent in Los Angeles, California, says that getting a peak price for your home starts with hiring an agent who employs advanced marketing strategies, offering you better options and modern tools.“The reality is simple: Not all agents are equal. Choosing someone just because ‘you know them’ can leave tens of thousands of dollars on the table,” he cautions. “Technology, digital reach, and data-based targeting have changed how buyers discover homes. If an agent’s marketing approach hasn’t evolved, the seller pays the price.”If you’re curious how much you might make from your home sale in 2026, many real estate companies offer free online net proceeds calculators.Seller insight: A separate HomeLight survey found that the biggest mistake sellers make is overpricing.Fear No. 2: Finding your next home after you sellSelling is only half the journey. Many homeowners worry about what comes next, especially if they’re juggling two transactions at once or giving up a historically low mortgage rate.“Sellers are worried about how long it will take to find the right buyer and what their own next move looks like,” says Robert Masoudpour, a Marietta, Georgia, agent with 24 years of experience. “Many want to sell but feel uncertain about timing, pricing, and giving up their low mortgage rate.”Others fear getting stuck between homes.“The combination of selling and buying at the same time creates fear of getting stuck with a home they don’t want,” says Jennifer Belmore, an agent in Vancouver, Washington.These concerns are common but solvable with the right planning and expertise.How to overcome itIn reality, today’s sellers have more flexibility than ever. Your options may include:Sale contingencies or rent-back agreements that give you extra time.Careful timing strategies guided by a knowledgeable agent.Modern buy-before-you-sell or bridge solutions that let you secure your next home first.A buy-before-you-sell program lets you unlock equity in your current home, streamlining the entire buy-sell process. You can make a strong, noncontingent offer on your new home and only move once.“Many sellers find using a buy-before-you-sell option is the easiest way to make a move that fits their goals for buying and selling a home in our current market,” says Ann Adams, an agent in Chandler, Arizona. “Better homes are available to pick from now, too, so you can find what you really want.”With preparation, expert guidance, and innovative new programs, you can coordinate both moves smoothly and avoid that feeling of being in limbo.Seller insight: If you want to avoid a double move or making a contingent offer on your new house, talk to your agent or lender about the different strategies to buy before you sell.Fear No. 3: Affording the move to your next homeFor homeowners with mortgage rates near 2% or 3%, today’s higher borrowing costs can make moving feel financially daunting.“Many homeowners don’t want to give up a 2%–3% mortgage rate only to buy again at double the rate or more,” says Jim DeHaan, an agent in Grand Rapids, Michigan.Some also worry about paying more for a home that still needs updates.“If they sell, they worry that they’ll have to pay more for a less updated home at a higher interest rate,” says Maggy Calhoun, an agent serving the Atlanta, Georgia, area.In certain areas, rising taxes and homeowners insurance costs are adding to the hesitation.How to overcome itEven in a higher-rate environment, many sellers successfully make their next move by:Leveraging accumulated equity to reduce or eliminate a new mortgage.Downsizing or relocating to a more affordable area.Exploring concessions, rate buydowns, or creative financing.“Homeowners who are buying can use some of their current equity to buy points to lower their interest rate on the new purchase,” notes DeHaan. “Or they can ask the seller [of the new home] to pay for an interest rate buydown.”As a seller, you might consider offering to fund a rate buydown to attract more offers, especially in markets where rising property prices, elevated taxes, or home insurance costs are adding to buyer hesitation.Seller insight: The HomeLight survey found that seller-funded rate buydowns are one of the top incentives being offered in the current market.Fear No. 4: Market uncertainty or economic fearsEconomic headlines, interest rate changes, and recession talk have left many households cautious about making big decisions.“Market uncertainty and economic fears are combining with the affordability concerns tied to moving elsewhere,” says Leila Torres Drewes, an agent on the Miranda Team in Burbank, California. “Add to this the fact that [for many], health insurance rates are doubling — people are hurting.”Walt Reinhardt, an Austin, Texas agent, agrees. “[With] so much uncertainty in the economy, a lot of people are frozen and afraid to make a move.”So what can you expect if you step into the market? Nearly half of survey agents (47%) predict that economic growth will remain slow throughout 2026, but they do not foresee a recession on the horizon. Another 20% of surveyed agents expect the economy will actually strengthen in 2026.How to overcome itUncertainty doesn’t automatically mean it’s a bad time to sell. In fact:Buyer demand still exists, especially for well-priced and turnkey homes.Inventory is expected to rise, bringing more balanced conditions.Smart strategies matter more than perfect timing.If a higher interest rate and monthly payments are playing a role in your doubts, Cypress, Texas, agent Herma Hayes reminds her clients that current interest rates are temporary, and the equity you have now can give you additional leverage.“Don’t wait to move. Sell now and find the home you want. It is a buyer's market,” she advises. “You can refinance the loan later. You will have a large amount to put down [from your equity], so you may not need to borrow as much as you think.”“The housing market is like the weather; can you control it?” says Miami, Florida, agent Hugo Barragan. “Therefore, be flexible, be open, follow your instincts, and enjoy all the amazing opportunities sitting out there waiting for you to show up.”Focusing on your immediate home needs, your current assets, and what you can control (e.g., pricing, preparation, marketing) often matters more than predicting the economy.Seller insight: Consult with an experienced local real estate agent or use a data-driven calculator to help you gauge the market before listing your home for sale.Fear No. 5: Trying to time the market perfectlyMany sellers hesitate, hoping prices or rates will shift in their favor. The challenge? Perfect timing is nearly impossible, even for experienced professionals.“Some sellers say, ‘I’ll wait for the market to go back up,’” says Claudia Marion, an agent in the Las Vegas, Nevada, area. “If you have been waiting the last two years, what will waiting longer do for you? Life changes. Look at the lifestyle, not the interest rate. Look at where you are going, not where you have been.”How to overcome itHistory shows that life timing usually matters more than market timing. You may benefit from selling when:Your financial goals make sense.Your next move is clear.Your local market conditions support a strong sale.“It is nearly impossible to time the market,” says James Bowerman, an agent serving Pasadena, Maryland. “Those waiting for mortgage rates to drop will likely never move or end up in a competitive market with lower supply and higher home prices.”“It’s important to let lifestyle needs guide your decisions rather than waiting for the ‘perfect' rate or the ‘perfect’ time,” says Janet McAllister, an agent in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with 20 years of experience. “Sellers should also recognize the real value their home has gained from years of equity growth, improvement, care, and enjoyment — its worth extends far beyond interest-rate trends.”Seller insight: Surveyed agents agree that a well-priced, well-prepared, and well-cared-for home can succeed in almost any market cycle.Partner with an expert to tackle your home seller fearsWhile fears about price, timing, affordability, and uncertainty are real, they’re also manageable with the right information and guidance. And with most agents expressing optimism about the 2026 market, many sellers may find new opportunities waiting on the other side of hesitation.“Timing the market is always hard and often perilous, but moving makes the most sense when one’s life says it makes the most sense,” says David Worters, an agent in Raleigh, North Carolina. “Interest rates ebb and flow, as do prices, and I’m always a proponent of putting life first. When it’s time, it’s time.”This story was produced by HomeLight and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	7 tips for odor-free underarms 7 tips for odor-free underarmsTalking about sweat is not a usual topic of conversation, but it is something that everyone deals with. It’s also an essential bodily function: You need to sweat to cool down.But if you find yourself getting an unpleasant whiff when you lift your arm, it can knock your confidence. Degree shares seven tipsto reduce underarm sweat, which is often where odor strikes first.What causes armpit odor?This might surprise you, but sweat doesn’t actually have a smell. The smell comes from bacteria that love to camp in warm, damp spots on your body, like your armpits. When you sweat, the bacteria feast on the proteins and fats in your sweat, and that’s when odor starts.It isn’t even about the amount of sweat you have; it’s down to the bacteria and your sweat’s composition. Matt Annecharico, an R&D Scientist at Unilever, explains, "Different skin bacteria break down sweat into different smelly compounds, and shifts in hormones, diet, stress, or hygiene can change which bacteria thrive or what's in the sweat itself. As a result, the byproducts bacteria create and how they smell can vary even when your sweat output stays constant."What does that mean? Two people could sweat the exact same amount but smell completely different.Diet, stress levels, sleep, hormonal shifts, and genetics all play a role. So, if you’ve noticed a more pronounced odor lately, it may be time to look a little deeper. Degree How do I stop my armpits from smelling?1. Get your hygiene routine rightThis is your first step to getting armpit odor under control. Wash daily and rinse off after working out so that sweat and bacteria are swept away. Try these additional tips:Use an antibacterial soap or body wash to say goodbye to that odor-causing bacteria.Exfoliate gently a couple of times a week to remove dead skin cells where bacteria like to hide.Dry off properly before you apply your deodorant or antiperspirant. Dry skin gives your product something to cling to, whereas moisture can dilute its effectiveness.Trim or shave underarm hair so that there’s less surface area for bacteria to cling to.2. Wear the right clothesWhat you put on in the morning affects how you smell by the afternoon. “Clothing doesn’t just absorb sweat, it changes the climate sitting on top of your skin, affecting how much your body sweats,” adds Annecharico. Here are some easy strategies to adopt:Choose breathable fabrics like cotton, linen, and moisture-wicking blends.Give tight-fitting tops that trap heat and keep sweat sitting against your skin a miss.Wash workout clothes after every single wear so that bacteria can’t set up camp in the fabric.Rotate your shirts every day, especially if you’ve been active or the weather has been hot.3. Take a look at your dietYour diet plays a bigger role than you might imagine. Some foods actually change the chemical composition of your sweat.Foods that may make your body odor worse:Garlic, onions, and heavy spices may release sulfur compounds that show up in your sweat.Red meat and processed foods can affect how your body processes proteins.Alcohol and caffeine.Foods that can help with odor:Leafy greens like spinach and kale contain chlorophyll with natural odor-neutralizing properties.Citrus fruits contain acids that may help flush out toxins.Water has so many benefits for your body, and with odor, it helps dilute sweat.If you’ve noticed a spike in body odor, watch your eating and drinking habits and see if any of these foods and drinks could be the culprits.4. Think twice about caffeine and alcoholCaffeine and alcohol get their own category because they affect sweat in a more systemic way. “Along with sleep deprivation and stress, caffeine and alcohol are linked to one system: the autonomic nervous system, which is your fight or flight response,” says Annecharico. Caffeine and alcohol can increase your heart rate and cortisol levels, contributing to increased sweating.So, if you’ve recently been having a few too many coffees or a couple of drinks after work, you might notice that you’re sweating more. And that sweat is chemically different from what you’d normally produce.5. Switch to antiperspirantYour usual deodorant may not be cutting it, and there’s a reason for that. Deodorants are designed to mask odor. If your odor has suddenly changed or increased, it might be time to explore an antiperspirant, which helps to reduce sweat production at the source. That means less bacterial activity and less odor.You can make your antiperspirant even more effective by applying it at night instead of in the morning. This gives the active ingredients time to work before your day even starts.6. Stay on top of your laundryBacteria can linger in your clothes, so make regular washing a habit. Leaving sweaty clothes in the hamper for a few days can give the bacteria time to take hold.7. Manage stress sweat"Stress sweat is biologically different sweat, controlled by the sympathetic nervous system,” says Annecharico. "When adrenaline or heart rate rises, this system triggers sweat that contains lipids and proteins that bacteria, naturally found on the skin, love. The result? A unique smell.”In other words, when you're stressed, your body is producing a chemically richer sweat from your apocrine glands. Bacteria love this type of sweat.A few stress-busting techniques to adopt:A few minutes of breathing exercises can help reduce stress.Sleep deprivation drives cortisol up, so aim to get consistent sleep.Exercise regularly to help balance your hormones and keep your stress response under control.Getting on top of managing your underarm sweat will help with armpit odor. A few changes to your daily habits can help address the root cause so that you can feel confident and odor-free.This story was produced by Degree and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Ziggy Stardust and Hacky Sack: What life was like the last time we went to the moon The Artemis II mission is the first time humans have headed to the moon since 1972. That year also marked the debut of The Godfather and the Egg McMuffin.
	Pinwheel garden planted in Davenport for Child Abuse Prevention Month The Davenport Police Department and Every Child hosted the Pinwheels for Prevention event to support child abuse prevention on Thursday. Blue pinwheels, "a symbol of the healthy, happy, and full childhoods all children deserve," were planted outside the Davenport Police Department. Throughout the region, child abuse agencies and their local partners host pinwheel gardens which [...]
	How companies can take advantage of new equipment deduction rules How companies can take advantage of new equipment deduction rulesWhen the government wants to spur business activity, the tax code can be an effective tool. And one popular way of using that tool is to give companies the ability to deduct more of the cost of business equipment immediately. Known as bonus depreciation, this incentive has been used after disruptions such as the terrorist attacks of 2001 and the 2008 financial crisis to get business investment back on track.It was also one of the tax perks for businesses in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. In that case, however, 100% bonus depreciation came with an expiration date. In 2023, businesses could immediately deduct only 80% of their qualifying expenses, and that dropped to 60% in 2024 and 40% in 2025.But that phaseout of this highly desirable tax advantage ended with the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) in summer 2025. The law not only restored 100% bonus depreciation for qualifying equipment put in service after January 19, 2025, but it also made the tax rule permanent. That’s good news for businesses of all sizes and in every industry. For example, invest $10 million in an industrial robot, and now you can reduce your company’s taxable income for the year by that full amount.Fifth Third shares how your company could benefit in this evolving landscape.What to know about bonus depreciationThe “bonus” aspect of bonus depreciation is the ability to speed up the timetable for deducting the costs of asset purchases—of factory equipment, machinery, business vehicles, furniture, fixtures and other kinds of business property—that would ordinarily have to be depreciated over a period of years.Bonus depreciation changes that equation, enabling a company to deduct all or part of the purchase price of an asset for the tax year during which it was acquired and put into service. The OBBBA establishes 100% bonus depreciation for qualifying assets that have a recovery period of 20 years or less. The fact that this new rule is permanent should add planning certainty about the tax treatment of current and future purchases. The rule change also simplifies accounting by eliminating the need to track depreciation of assets over several years.How to leverage the new law1. A tax lease. There are several ways to take advantage of these provisions in the OBBBA. With the guidance of their tax advisors, businesses should evaluate their ability to fully use the depreciation expense generated by new capital expenditures for qualifying assets. (For 2025, this applies only to equipment put into service after January 19.)For companies whose taxable net income might not be sufficient to support taking the 100% bonus depreciation in a given year, there is a powerful alternative: leasing the new equipment through a financial institution vs. buying it. In this arrangement, known as a tax lease, the bank is the official owner of the equipment and gets the bonus depreciation. The bank passes those savings to the company leasing the equipment in the form of lower payments. Companies will often choose to lease specific types of assets, such as medical equipment, material handling equipment and information technology, all of which can become outmoded relatively quickly. 2. A fair market lease. To acquire these assets, a business can take advantage of a fair market value lease. This provides options at the end of the lease to purchase the equipment for fair market value, extend the equipment while a decision is being made or return the equipment. Often the plan is to return the equipment and replace it with new to avoid technical obsolescence or an increase in maintenance costs. The financial benefits of a lease arrangement can be considerable.Suppose the value of the leased equipment is $1 million. Before the passage of the OBBBA, bonus depreciation in 2025 would have applied to only 40% of that cost. With a 21% corporate tax rate, that would have resulted in a deduction worth $84,000. But with the reinstatement of 100% expensing, the value of the deduction rises to $210,000—and lease payments would drop by a commensurate amount. In considering how to use this rule change to your advantage now and in the future, it’s essential to consult with your tax advisors.. 3. Other options. Some companies will leverage the new law by choosing to use debt to finance their equipment purchases. In that case, says King, a business will get the benefit of the restored 100% bonus depreciation—and will need to decide what to do with the tax savings. But what if, for example, your taxable income for the year is just $5 million and your capital expenditures are $15 million? Taking the bonus depreciation would potentially give the company a $10 million net operating loss or carryforward.While the company can carry forward that loss to use in future years, the business may prefer to avoid a carryforward now. One solution might be for the company to finance $5 million of the equipment purchase and use a tax lease for the rest of it. This approach could maximize the company’s tax strategy. Then the bank’s ability to use the tax depreciation benefits on the lease will result in reduced lease payments, further improving the business’s cash flow and adding flexibility for pursuing other goals.Taking advantage of other new tax rulesAnother provision of the OBBBA affects business interest deductions, changing back from rules based on earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) to a formula using earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA). Many companies, especially if they’re private equity-owned, are very focused on EBITDA. EBITDA is the multiple by which such a business’s performance is judged, and it’s crucial for growing the value of the company.In these and other situations, businesses need to work closely with their tax advisors to plan their investment strategies. Tax lease opportunities should be considered by companies with a focus on EBITDA growth. Depending on the assets being acquired, there are tax lease options that may be capitalized for book purposes. Regardless, the opportunities presented by the OBBBA are likely to be substantial. The new rules can help maximize your tax strategy and improve your cash flow, which gives you capital for other investments. Whether that means more equipment, expansion, more people, automation or even just more cash, now you’ll be in a better position to pursue your strategic goals.The reinstatement of 100% bonus depreciation will reshape the capital investment landscape. Now is the time to reassess your capital strategies, align with the tax incentives provided by the bill and take action to optimize investment timing, structure and return.This story was produced by Fifth Third and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	5 sales sequences that drive higher response rates 5 sales sequences that drive higher response ratesOn average, cold emails only have a 0.9% response rate.It’s hard to stand out in a crowded inbox, and it’s only going to get harder.New email sender guidelines have been out for a couple years now. To even land in an inbox, you’re required to have email authentication in place, offer one-click unsubscribe, and maintain a spam compliance rate of 0.3%.To increase your odds of getting a response and booking a meeting, messages need to be timed and targeted, not sent in bulk.In this article, Apollo explains how to create a standout sales sequence with five examples you can implement today.What is a sales sequence?Let’s start at the beginning.A sales sequence is an outreach campaign with multiple touchpoints.You can incorporate emails, phone calls, LinkedIn messages, handwritten notes, and more. There isn’t a set number of touchpoints guaranteed to book a meeting, but the RAIN Group found that, on average, it takes eight touches to start a conversation.While sequences make it easier to conduct outreach at scale, it’s not enough to create any old sales sequence.Why sales sequences work (and why you need them)Tired of leads going cold? A solid sales sequence is your secret weapon. It’s not just about sending more emails — it’s about sending the right message at the right time, automatically. This keeps you top-of-mind, frees you up from manual follow-up, and turns lukewarm interest into booked meetings. Simply put, sequences bring structure and consistency to your outreach, so you can focus on what you do best: closing deals.5 sales sequences you can use todaySequence 1: Tailored, high-value prospect sequenceThis eight-step sequence is intended for decision-makers and champions, aka your best-fit leads, and should be highly personalized.A great way to start this sequence is by employing what sales professional Samantha McKenna calls her “show me you know me” method of writing intentional emails that demonstrate you understand your buyers.These are the elements of a hyper-personalized email using the seven elements of McKenna’s method:Subject line: This should be unique to the recipient. It likely won’t make sense to anyone else but the person receiving the email.The first sentence: Start with an authentic intro, rather than niceties or your sales pitch.The transition: Make a logical tie from the first sentence to your sales pitch.The challenge: What can you solve for your buyer? Focus on the person, not the company.The value proposition: Consider your hook and your buyer’s pain points.Hidden or forthcoming objection: Think about the most common objection you receive and get ahead of it.The close: Always include a call to action, but don’t include a calendar link in your first email.For the remaining sequence steps, mix in other types of outreach.Engage and connect with your prospects on LinkedIn and consider sending a handwritten note to stay top of mind.Custom notes cut through the noise and help you stand out among competitors. A great handwritten note is casual, personal, and to the point, and includes information that makes it easy for your prospect to follow up.Smart personalization works.Sequence 2: High-priority relationship-builder sequenceThis sequence is custom-built for VIP decision-makers and champions and it requires you to think outside of the box.For this sequence, you’re going to foster connection and community by inviting your top-tier prospects to an event. Think happy hours, workshops, mini golf—activities that allow you to connect with your prospects as humans.Here are some tips to make this sequence a success:Leverage your executive team at the event, and make sure to promote their presence in your outreach.Build buffer time between when the sequence starts and when the event will be held.Send a handwritten note to add a personal touch.Your first email should explain why your prospect would want to attend the event and share all the important details.Continue to follow up with a series of calls and emails.Sequence 3: Personalized starter sequence for medium-priority leadsProspects in this sequence are influential in the buying decision, but they are likely not your champion.This is a relatively simple sequence with three emails and two calls. Diversifying your touch points increases the likelihood of getting a response.Don’t forget to personalize your first email. Introduce yourself, explain why you’re reaching out, and share your unique value prop.As with all of these sequences, feel free to customize them to better fit your buyers.Sequence 4: Automated sequenceThis is a simple sequence for your lower-priority audience.The idea here is to segment your audience. Lumping together “marketing agencies in Cleveland” or “recently-funded, mid-sized accounting firms” in a sequence allows you to create a fairly customized message without going through the work of personalizing each email.In your first email, explain who you are, what you do, why you’re reaching out, why they should care, and ask if they’re interested. Follow up accordingly, using automation to free up your time.Then, use a mix of emails and calls over the course of two weeks.Sequence 5: Call-only sequenceThe last sequence is for any prospect on your list.When you can’t find an email address or are simply looking for another way to reach people, this call-only sequence is a great option.To boost your cold-calling efforts, consider using Charlotte Lloyd’s cold-calling framework. She used these 5 Cs to generate $1.5 million in outbound sales.Consent: Ask if the prospect is willing to chat for a few minutes.Challenge: Address the prospect’s pain points.Convey: Present the value of your solution.Counter: Be prepared to discuss common objections.Close: Give your prospect a compelling reason to take the next step.Another way to stand out? Try calling your prospect’s cell phone right before or after business hours.Remember that the key to booking a meeting is crafting a unique and relevant message.Best practices for building effective sales sequencesTo stand out from the pack and deliver an attention-grabbing message, you need to use personalization and segmentation.Personalization is typically a one-to-one approach, meaning you are customizing your outreach to one person at a time. This strategy is meant for your highest-priority prospects. It takes the most work but is likely to have the greatest impact.Segmentation is a one-to-few approach and enables you to send tailored messages to a group of people at once. This approach is best suited for your medium to low-priority prospects.Segmentation is often based on location, industry, or persona. For example, one of your segments could be CEOs at marketing agencies in California.You can use a combination of personalization and segmentation to craft sequences that lead to more meetings.Start building sequences that book more meetingsThe right sales sequence builds responses while also building a pipeline. These templates are your starting point, but the real power comes from adapting them to your audience and optimizing based on what works. Stop guessing and start engaging with a structured, data-driven approach.Frequently asked questions about sales sequencesHow many touchpoints should be in a sales sequence?There’s no magic number, but it often takes around eight touches to get a conversation started. The key is to mix your channels — like email, calls, and social media — and focus on providing value at each step. Start with a plan, but be ready to test and see what works best for your audience.What’s the difference between sales sequences and email campaigns?Think of it like this: An email campaign is a one-to-many broadcast, like a newsletter. A sales sequence is a one-to-one (or one-to-few) conversation. Sequences are automated but feel personal, with multiple steps across different channels designed to engage a specific prospect until they respond or a goal is met.How long should I wait between sequence touches?Give your prospects some breathing room, but not so much that they forget you. A good starting point is waiting 2-3 business days between touches. If a step is more passive, like a LinkedIn profile view, you can do it sooner. The goal is to be persistent, not annoying.Should I use the same sequence for all prospects?Definitely not. The most effective sequences are tailored to the prospect’s persona, industry, or pain point. You should have different sequences for different segments. A high-value C-level executive needs a much more personalized, high-touch approach than a lower-priority lead.What’s the best time to start a sales sequence?The best time is when a prospect shows interest. This could be a “buying signal” like visiting your pricing page, downloading a guide, or getting a promotion. If you’re reaching out cold, aim for times when they’re likely to be checking messages, like mid-morning on a Tuesday or Thursday, but always test to see what generates the best results.This story was produced by Apollo and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	FIRST ALERT DAY: Live Weather Blog Realtime updates on the severe weather threat in the Quad Cities
	Licensing board member faces disciplinary charges from a separate board An eastern Iowa physician who is a member of a state licensing board is now facing licensing-board charges herself.
	The beautiful Venetian plant with a secret climate superpower The beautiful Venetian plant with a secret climate superpowerVenice’s landmarks teem with tourists — so many, in fact, that the city has had to implement restrictions, like banning guides from using loudspeakers. But just outside the famous canals and resplendent architecture sits an ecosystem that teems with less obnoxious forms of life: the Venetian lagoon. For millennia, its marshes have hosted a bevy of flora and fauna, and for centuries have protected the city from invasion by its enemies.Now, protecting this habitat, and others like it, can help protect people and the planet. Traipsing through the wetland and sampling plants, researchers identified a carbon-capturing powerhouse, known as sea lavender, of the genus Limonium. By restoring these biomes, conservationists would not only boost local biodiversity, but also ensure its ability to trap that planet-warming gas. “Salt marshes are not only sites of carbon sequestration,” said Tegan Blount, a geoscientist at Italy’s University of Padova, lead author of a new paper describing the research. “Their conservation also protects many other ecosystem services, which are vitally important from a local to global scale,” Blount explained to Grist.Aboveground, sea lavender is a stunner. True to its name — though technically it isn’t lavender — it produces lovely purple flowers that attract pollinators, thus supporting biodiversity. Unlike terrestrial lavender, though, Limonium tolerates salty, water-logged conditions, allowing it to thrive in the wetlands of the Venice lagoon. “During summer, the salt marsh meadows are tinted purple by an undulating mass of sea lavender flowers, rife with bees and other insects,” Blount said. Courtesy of Tegan Blount While Limonium is great to look at and all, these researchers were more interested in what’s belowground. Instead of a network of fine filaments, sea lavender’s mature rhizome system grows like a hand reaching up from the soil, with foliage sprouting from the fingertips at the surface. (That’s them in the photo.)This impacts the Venetian marshes in several ways. With its sturdy root system and foliage, sea lavender anchors the waterlogged soil, generates organic material, and traps sediment, which reduces erosion and habitat loss in the face of pressures like sea level rise. It also can create a more stable and amenable environment for other salt-tolerant species, further boosting biodiversity. “So it can also be a stepping stone,” Blount said.Even after it dies, this marvelous plant’s root system can persist for long periods, continuing to engineer the mud. The study found that compared to other marshy species in the area, like those in the genera Sarcocornia and Juncus, Limonium creates much more biomass below the ground than above it, and markedly enhances the organic carbon content of the sediment. In fact, sea lavender can retain 12 times as much biomass underground as you see growing topside.By protecting these ecosystems, sea lavender can prosper alongside other species, so conservationists wouldn’t need to constantly tend to them, Blount said. Species of Limonium grow all over the world, too, from the coasts of North America to Africa to Asia. Restoring those habitats, then, would benefit biodiversity while enhancing carbon sequestration and storage. Additionally, healthy wetlands help absorb the force of hurricane storm surges, mitigating the inundation of coastal cities.Properly restored, coastal ecosystems can be self-sustaining. Infrastructure like sea walls, on the other hand, is expensive to construct and maintain, especially as ocean levels rise. Given enough space to creep inland, wetlands can adapt. “These systems can keep up pace with sea level rise, as long as they can migrate backwards,” said Emily Landis, global climate adaptation and resilience director at The Nature Conservancy, who wasn’t involved in the study. “That means they can still provide that essential adaptation, flood reduction benefit.”They bring economic benefits too, when conservationists work with Indigenous communities to determine how they use these ecosystems. Subsistence fishing, for instance, can be done in a measured way that ensures piscine populations don’t crash, which would be terrible both for the ecosystem and the humans that rely on it. “They know how to take care of their coastline,” Landis said. “They know what is sustainable.”In the Venetian lagoon, fishers have long used valli da pesca, essentially ponds that function as artificial ecosystems. This provides shelter for baby fish to grow big enough to harvest. Taking animals out of these habitats may sound counterproductive, but in a way it incentivizes protecting these areas. “So conservation is not just a matter of preserving the environment, but also to have something back,” said Alice Stocco, an ecologist at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, who studies the valli da pesca but wasn’t involved in the new paper.The value of sea lavender, then, isn’t just how much carbon it captures in the Venetian lagoon, but the habitats — and therefore economic and ecological benefits — it provides. “An ecosystem — nature in general — has its own value, which is intrinsic and sometimes cannot be measured,” Stocco said. “Healthy ecosystems allow for healthy people.”This story was produced by Grist and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Bitcoin price prediction 2030: 5-year bitcoin forecast Bitcoin price prediction 2030: 5-year bitcoin forecastBitcoin continues to attract significant attention from major financial institutions, which are publishing long-term price forecasts based on trends of institutional adoption, regulatory developments, and the cryptocurrency's role as "digital gold."Wall Street analysts and investment firms have issued updated predictions, ranging from conservative estimates to bullish scenarios.Plus500 shares a summary of selected Bitcoin price forecasts published by third-party financial institutions:TL;DRNear-Term (Bitcoin price prediction 2026): Standard Chartered: $100,000–$150,000; Bernstein: $150,000, peak $200,000 by 2027.Mid-Term (Bitcoin price forecast 2027–2029): Some analyses estimate Bitcoin could reach between $200,000 and $500,000 under certain scenarios involving institutional adoption and ETF inflows.Long-Term (Bitcoin price prediction 2030+): Standard Chartered: $500,000; Bernstein: $1 million by 2033.Key Drivers: Institutional adoption, Bitcoin ETF inflows, fixed supply, potential gold market capture.Risks: Regulatory changes, market volatility, slower adoption, and competition from other digital assets.Overall: Bitcoin remains highly volatile; forecasts vary widely, highlighting both potential growth and risk.Near-Term Outlook: Bitcoin Price Prediction 2026According to a CNBC report, Standard Chartered’s Bitcoin forecast projects the cryptocurrency will reach $150,000 by the end of 2026. The U.K.-based bank cut its previous 2025 target of $200,000 in half, citing slower-than-expected institutional demand and a shift toward ETF-driven buying patterns rather than direct Bitcoin purchases. The bank's analysts noted three structural changes in the market that prompted the revision.According to Bloomberg, Bernstein expects the current market cycle to peak in 2027 at approximately $200,000 per Bitcoin. Moreover, analysts at Bernstein cited changing market dynamics and adjusted their near-term expectations while maintaining confidence in Bitcoin's long-term trajectory.Mid-Term Projections: Bitcoin Price Forecast 2027-2029According to Nasdaq, Bernstein's updated forecast anticipates Bitcoin reaching $200,000 by 2027, although analysts note that outcomes may vary depending on market conditions. The firm bases this projection on historical Bitcoin halving cycles and institutional adoption patterns, though analysts acknowledge that traditional four-year cycles may be disrupted by increased institutional participation.Long-Term Vision: Bitcoin Price Prediction 2030 and BeyondAccording to Yahoo Finance, Standard Chartered maintains that Bitcoin will reach its long-term target, though the timeline has been extended. The bank now projects that Bitcoin will hit $500,000 by 2030, a delay from its previous 2028 target. This forecast assumes continued growth in spot Bitcoin ETF adoption and Bitcoin capturing a significant portion of the gold market's value as a store-of-wealth alternative.According to Nasdaq.com, Bernstein maintains a long-term forecast of $1 million per Bitcoin by 2033. The firm's analysts project sustained growth driven by continued institutional adoption and increasing demand from both corporate treasuries and nation-states adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets.Risk Factors and Market DynamicsForecast revisions by major institutions underscore the inherent uncertainty in Bitcoin price predictions.All forecasts carry significant uncertainty and depend on numerous variables, including regulatory developments in major economies, technological advancements, competition from other digital assets, and macroeconomic conditions. The wide range of predictions by 2030 illustrates the speculative nature of long-term cryptocurrency valuations and the uncertainty surrounding such forecasts.ConclusionBitcoin’s long-term outlook remains highly uncertain, with published forecasts reflecting a wide divergence of views among market participants.While major financial institutions increasingly view it as a maturing macro asset with “digital gold” characteristics, their forecasts underscore a wide divergence in expectations driven by assumptions around institutional adoption, ETF inflows, and regulatory clarity.Near-term projections have become more measured, reflecting slower demand growth and evolving market structure, yet long-term targets remain ambitious, hinging on Bitcoin’s fixed supply and its potential to capture a meaningful share of gold’s market value.Ultimately, these forecasts underscore a fundamental reality: Some analysts believe that Bitcoin’s future price performance may be influenced by global adoption trends, although the outcomes remain uncertain and highly volatile.Actual market outcomes may differ materially from published forecasts, and cryptocurrency prices can experience significant volatility over short periods.*The content provided on this website is for marketing and general informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment research, advice, or a personal recommendation, nor has it been prepared in accordance with legal requirements designed to promote the independence of investment research. Information and views are based on third-party sources and historical data believed to be reliable, but no representation or warranty is made as to their accuracy or completeness. Any opinions or forecasts are subject to change without notice, and past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. This material does not consider individual objectives or financial circumstances and should not be relied upon as personalised advice. PLUS500 does not provide investment research or personalised recommendations and accepts no liability for any loss arising from the use of this information.FAQWhat is the Bitcoin price prediction for 2026?Major institutions estimate Bitcoin could trade between $100,000 and $150,000 by 2026, with Standard Chartered projecting up to $150,000 and Bernstein forecasting higher peaks later in the cycle.What are mid-term Bitcoin price forecasts for 2027–2029?Mid-term projections suggest Bitcoin could reach $200,000 to $500,000, depending on institutional adoption, ETF inflows, and broader market conditions.What is the long-term Bitcoin price prediction for 2030 and beyond?Long-term forecasts vary widely, with Standard Chartered projecting $500,000 by 2030 and Bernstein maintaining a $1 million target by 2033.What factors are driving Bitcoin price forecasts?Key drivers include institutional adoption, spot Bitcoin ETF inflows, Bitcoin’s fixed supply, and its potential role as a digital alternative to gold.What are the main risks to Bitcoin price predictions?Risks include regulatory uncertainty, market volatility, slower adoption rates, and competition from other digital assets.This story was produced by Plus500 and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Audi Crooks enters the transfer portal Iowa State University’s Audi Crooks has entered the transfer portal, the Junior center shared in a post Thursday morning.
	ChatGPT shopping: How it works, and how to get your products listed ChatGPT shopping: How it works, and how to get your products listedGoogle does it. Bing does it. And now, ChatGPT does it too.With ChatGPT Shopping, users can discover products in visual carousels similar to Google’s and Bing’s shopping results. They can research options, compare prices, read review summaries, and (soon) buy products without ever leaving the chat.For e-commerce businesses, this opens a new channel for getting discovered and driving revenue. Major retailers are already utilizing the platform, as seen with the recent partnership between Walmart and OpenAI to create an AI-first shopping assistant that learns customer preferences. And unlike Google and Bing shopping ads, ChatGPT’s product carousels are currently free.This guide from WebFX covers how ChatGPT Shopping works, how it compares to Google and Bing, why it matters for your business, and how to get your products listed.What is ChatGPT Shopping?ChatGPT Shopping is OpenAI’s response to one of the most common use cases for the platform: researching and buying products.When users ask ChatGPT about products, they now see visual carousels with relevant listings and direct links to product pages. Each listing can include product images, pricing, ratings, descriptions, and review summaries.With ChatGPT Instant Checkout (powered by the Agentic Commerce Protocol), users will soon be able to purchase products directly within the chat, making ChatGPT a full-funnel commerce experience.How does ChatGPT Shopping work?There are several components (or ranking factors) to ChatGPT’s shopping results. WebFX It’s important to note that ChatGPT does not rank product results based on:PriceShipping costs and policiesReturn policiesThese factors can, however, determine whether a product gets recommended.If a user’s search intent requests a product under a certain amount or a provider with XYZ shipping or return policies, then ChatGPT will search for products that meet those requirements. And that’s okay. You want qualified traffic versus vanity visits to your site. WebFX Once the results are generated, users can click on different listings to see:Additional product imagesWhere they can purchase the itemWhy they might like the itemWhat other people are saying about the item WebFX Users also have the option to select an item and ask ChatGPT for more details.How does ChatGPT Shopping compare to Google and Bing?So, how do the product carousels compare for ChatGPT versus Google? What about Bing? WebFX The examples for “best July 4th toddler outfits under $35” offer a visual comparison.ChatGPT WebFX Google WebFX Bing WebFX There are a few observations from these examples:One of the ChatGPT product listings also appears in Bing’s resultsTwo of the ChatGPT product listings also appear in Google’s resultsThe ChatGPT and Google product listings are all for girls, suggesting personalizationIt’s no secret that ChatGPT’s third-party data providers include Bing and that its crawler, OAI-SearchBot, is indexing content from across the web, which explains some of these initial similarities.Why does ChatGPT Shopping matter?There are a few reasons ChatGPT Shopping matters to marketers and business owners:Cost: ChatGPT’s product carousels are currently free; there is no cost to discover.Reach: As the #1 AI chatbot, ChatGPT reaches more than 800 million people each week.Overlap: ChatGPT Shopping overlaps with e-commerce search engine optimization (SEO).Targeting: ChatGPT’s personalization makes it easier than ever to reach your market.Integrations: OpenAI and Shopify will soon allow users to buy without leaving ChatGPT.With ChatGPT Instant Checkout, that experience goes a step further, enabling users to purchase products directly in chat through the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP).Plus, optimizing for ChatGPT Shopping now (versus later) gives e-commerce stores a first-mover advantage. These optimizations will also improve your visibility in other search and answer engines, like Google, Perplexity AI, and more.How to appear in ChatGPT Shopping resultsHere’s how to appear in ChatGPT Shopping results:Allow ChatGPT’s crawlers: First, make it possible for ChatGPT’s crawler (OAI-SearchBot) to crawl your site. This optimization usually requires no action unless your robots.txt file has disallowed OAI-SearchBot. If that’s the case, update your robots.txt file.Practice e-commerce SEO: Rank higher in search engine results and increase your chances of appearing in ChatGPT responses with e-commerce SEO optimizations, which include SEO copy for product pages, schema markup, site architecture, and more.Use Product schema markup: Structured metadata, which includes Product markup, is one of ChatGPT’s selection factors for its shopping results. Use the markup to provide ChatGPT with essential information, like pricing, product name, average rating, and more.Upload products to Google Merchant Center: Give ChatGPT even more data for its shopping results with Google Merchant Center, which also supports Google’s AI-powered features, like AI Overviews.Enhance product visuals: You have little time to capture a user’s attention in search results, whether on ChatGPT or Google. Make it count with high-quality visuals that show your product, rather than hiding it in lifestyle shots.Improve review generation: Invest in review generation, like through automated email drip campaigns, to build the number (and quality) of reviews for your products, which can serve as a powerful trust signal for users shopping on answer engines like ChatGPT.Bonus tips for optimizing for ChatGPTLearn more about getting discovered in ChatGPT conversations, from product listings to citations:Create a generative AI channel in GA4: Track traffic from ChatGPT and other AI platforms, like Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and Perplexity AI, with a custom channel group in Google Analytics 4. You can even use ChatGPT to generate the necessary regex.Plan for ChatGPT advertising: As the platform evolves, advertising opportunities are expected to emerge, allowing businesses to expand their presence within the interface.Produce top-of-the-funnel content: You don’t have to settle for appearing in bottom-of-the-funnel searches. Reach users sooner and cut out the competition by producing high-quality, top-of-the-funnel content that includes firsthand insights, data points, and more.This story was produced by WebFX and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Women reveal the things they worry about most when navigating music festivals Women reveal the things they worry about most when navigating music festivalsIn the lead-up to the first weekend of Coachella and as festival season officially gets underway, a March 2-5 OnePoll.com survey of 2,000 U.S. women who have attended a music festival commissioned by Always and Secret found that excess sweating from being too hot (35%) ranked among the top challenges. Dealing with body odor (24%) and being on their period or getting it unexpectedly also featured highly (19%) for survey respondents.Not being able to look or feel fresh throughout the day (17%) also stood out, with a further 13% sharing having to change a pad or tampon on-site as something they don’t look forward to. But above all, access to a clean and sanitary restroom ranked as the top priority, according to more than half (56%) of female festival-goers. Always and Secret The amenities women say matter most include air conditioning (52%), hand sanitizer (51%), hand towels (37%), and access to water or a beverage fountain (37%).Additional sought-after features include complimentary deodorant (35%) and period products (25%), phone charging stations (28%), and bag hooks (25%).Even more elevated touches are also welcome, with women highlighting a desire for a perfume bar (19%), mood lighting with music (8%), and a restroom attendant (7%).Ultimately, the research highlights that beyond functionality, the bathroom remains an important cultural space for women at festivals.It’s where moments of connection, confidence resets, and shared rituals happen — a space that, even in the middle of a high-energy event, continues to hold a unique place in girlhood.The research also highlighted the everyday rituals or products women pack to help them stay fresh and prepared throughout festival season, with more than half saying they prioritize wet wipes (58%) and deodorant (51%).And likely because more than two-thirds (64%) said their experience can be impacted when they have their period at a festival or event, it’s no wonder a further 62% would pack extra personal care items when attending an outdoor event during their period, while 55% would ensure they have extra underwear.And of those who took part in the study, 55% said they resort to planning their outfits accordingly if they anticipate being on their period at a music festival, such as covering up more or not wearing white.Top 10 things women worry about navigating at a festival:Access to a clean and sanitary toilet or shower (56%)Expensive food/drink (56%)Excessive sweating from being too hot (35%)Not having phone signal or being able to charge a phone (27%)Body odor (24%)Noise levels/volume (22%)Being on their period or getting it unexpectedly (19%)Painful feet/blisters (18%)Not looking or feeling fresh (17%)Changing a tampon or pad (13%)This story was produced by Always and Secret, and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Weekend Rundown with WLLR \| April 2, 2026 There are many family-friendly events going on this weekend, and we've brought in Dani Howe from WLLR to break it down.
	Why more households are investing in home gyms than ever before Why more households are investing in home gyms than ever beforeThe home-fitness boom that took off during the pandemic was widely expected to fade once gyms reopened. Once people could leave the house again, the thinking went, the living room would go back to being a living room.Four years later, however, the trend has only accelerated. RITFIT found that people are buying more home gym equipment than ever. The global home fitness equipment market reached roughly $13.5 billion in 2025 and is projected to approach $23 billion by 2034, according to Fortune Business Insights. Gyms have bounced back, too. But the home fitness trend shows no signs of going anywhere.Part of the reason is money. Health & Fitness Association data shows average monthly gym dues in the United States rose 9% to $60 in 2023, then climbed again to $69 in 2024. Meanwhile, the median monthly fee jumped to $38 from roughly $30, where it had held for most of the prior decade. Even Planet Fitness, which had kept its basic membership at $10 since 1998, raised it to $15 in 2024, attributing the increase to rising operating costs.None of these increases would break the bank on their own. But gym memberships have always been an easy line to cross out when budgets get tight, and after years of cost-of-living pressure, many households have done exactly that.Cost is now the No. 1 reason Americans cancel gym memberships, cited by 41% of those who left in a YouGov survey. At current prices, a mid-range home gym setup can total less than a year's worth of membership fees for a single household. This may be why nearly one in five departing members felt they could get the results they wanted without belonging to a gym.Yet the math has favored home fitness for decades. A squat rack and a barbell have always been cheaper over time than a monthly membership. So, if cost alone were fueling the home fitness industry, it would have happened long ago. Something else has changed.The first clue is that people are increasingly saying they feel busy and burnt out. Bureau of Labor Statistics data from 2024 shows Americans aged 35 to 44, a prime age group for gym membership, average less daily leisure time than any other adult age group. The causes are debated. Work is the obvious candidate: Globally, nearly two-thirds of employees reported increased workloads last year, an EY survey of 15,000 workers found. But researchers have also pointed to smartphones and social media as a driver of perceived time pressure and mental fatigue, which may help explain why burnout rates look remarkably similar across countries with very different working cultures.Whatever the cause, the squeeze shows up in cancellation data. Roughly a quarter of Americans who dropped gym memberships in 2024 blamed a lack of time. In response, gyms have increasingly added 24-hour access and shorter group classes. Even so, for people who are short on time, working out at home simply makes more sense."When I get home from work, I just change my clothes and go right into a workout," said Christopher Kovach, 35, a home gym owner in the U.S. "I don't have to worry about traffic on the roads and not getting back home in time for the kids to get home from school."Time and cost go a long way toward explaining the shift. Still, there's another cause that often gets overlooked: affordable home gym equipment has massively improved in recent years.Not long ago, budget home gym equipment meant a bulky treadmill that dominated a room or a folding bench that wobbled under any real weight. That's no longer true. The quality gap between an average home setup and a commercial floor has narrowed significantly to the point where, for many households, the monthly membership fee is harder and harder to justify.Part of that is down to innovation. The number of manufacturers competing in the compact, multi-functional segment has surged since 2020, with brands investing in modular designs and combination machines that merge Smith machines, cable crossovers and pull-down stations into single frames.Where a home gym once required a dedicated room full of separate equipment, a single machine can now cover most of what a commercial gym floor offers. Industry analysts at Future Market Insights report that mid-range, space-efficient equipment is now among the fastest-growing categories in the industry.That versatility has a particular appeal for families. "My whole family is able to get all their workouts in on the same machine, even when each person is at a drastically different stage of lifting," said Kovach.None of this means the commercial gym is obsolete. For people who thrive on group classes, specialized coaching, or the social energy of a gym floor, a membership still has a lot going for it. But as more households run the numbers (and the clock), a growing share are arriving at the same conclusion: the best gym is the one they'll actually use. And for a lot of families, that turns out to be the one 30 seconds from the kitchen.This story was produced by RITFIT and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Single, savvy and secure: 3 steps to owning your financial future Single, savvy and secure: 3 steps to owning your financial futureThe beauty of being single is that you can design your life on your own terms. Whether it’s cultivating your personal sanctuary or making big career moves and travel plans without a second opinion, you’re the sole architect of your future. While this freedom is a major asset, it also means being completely responsible for everything — a challenge that requires both savvy and strategy.Single spender? A financial peek behind the curtainUnless you have roommates or outside financial support, being single likely means you’re covering all of the expenses for me, myself and I.That’s not necessarily a disadvantage. It just requires a different approach to set yourself up for success.In Ally Bank’s “The Cost of Singledom” consumer report, only 17% of singles feel they spend more money because they are single, and only one-third claim they’ve experienced a “singles’ tax.” Many actually feel that being single offers a better benefit: the freedom and independence to make their own choices. Ally Financial shares highlights from the report and offers tips for managing finances as a single person.Your money, your rules: 3 financial tips for a party of 1For many, being single can be a time to get finances in order because they don’t have to consider another person’s debts or spending habits. Still, 75% of singles say they worry about money at least several times a year, compared to 69% of those in a relationship. Women, both single and partnered, also feel significantly more overwhelmed, anxious and worried about their finances than men, reporting higher levels of anxiety, worry and frustration.Fortunately, there are steps you can take to help you feel more in control of your financial situation.1. Feel the support of a solo safety netWhen you're single, you typically can’t depend on another person’s financial support during emergency situations. Because of this, one of the best ways to prepare for unexpected expenses, like medical bills or home repairs, is to build an emergency fund. While how much you should save depends on factors like your income and monthly costs, general guidance suggests keeping three to six months’ worth of essential expenses in your emergency savings.Start building your solo safety net (emergency fund) by:Creating a budget: List out all of your essential and nonessential expenses to assess how you're spending and where you could cut down.Automating your savings: Set recurring transfers to help your account grow with minimal effort.Saving unexpected income: Keep your raise, bonus or tax refund for a rainy day by automatically routing it to your emergency fund.2. Break up with debt on your termsAccording to the survey, 39% of singles find debt to be the most challenging expense to cover on their own. If you’re unsure of how to tackle debt, consider following one of these methods:Snowball strategy: Pay the minimum balance on all debts and apply remaining funds to your smallest debt first.Avalanche strategy: Pay the minimum balances on all debts and apply remaining funds to the debt with the highest interest first.Debt consolidation: Combine debts into one manageable payment.Debt management: Work with a professional if debt becomes overwhelming.3. Making money moves: Other paths toward financial independenceBeing single has its advantages, like the ability to tailor your savings and investments to your lifestyle and goals.Some smart money moves to consider include:Taking advantage of employer benefits: Make sure you’re using your employer benefits to the fullest. These might include contributing to a 401(k), opting into health insurance that matches your lifestyle or taking advantage of access to financial planning tools.Investing early: When it comes to investing, time can be your biggest advantage. Putting even a small amount of money in the market could pay off in the future. Keep in mind, investments have the potential to grow, but also carry the risk of loss.Build a personal financial system: Optimize your accounts for everyday spending and short- and long-term savings goals.2 hearts, 1 budget, same stressPlot twist: Being coupled doesn’t necessarily relieve financial anxieties. Ally’s survey shows that levels of financial confidence are actually fairly similar, regardless of relationship status, with 38% of coupled respondents saying they’re able to set aside money in savings each month and 29% of singles say the same. Sentiment around debt repayment is also similar: 54% of couples say they will be able to pay off their debt over time, and 45% of singles say the same.If you have a special someone in your life, it’s important to discuss finances openly and regularly about things like:Spending habitsDebt and financial obligationsShort- and long-term goalsHaving these conversations often and early can ensure you’re both on the same page as you transition from being single to merging finances with another person.The sole architect: Building a financial foundationFinancial confidence depends on your intention, not on your relationship status. By building strong habits now, you’re securing the freedom to live exactly how you choose, now and in the future.This story was produced by Ally Financial and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Nearly 50 customers without power after tree falls on powerlines, garage A tree fell on powerlines and a garage in an alley Thursday morning between Seventh and Eighth streets.
	Scott County power plant proposal draws opposition A packed house filled the Scott County Library in Eldridge Wednesday night.
	Severe weather update for today We have been getting a lot of rain across the Quad Cities for most of this week, and we are continuing to get rain as we head toward the weekend. Today could cause some problems with an enhanced risk of severe weather issued by the National Weather Service. These potentially severe storms will be in [...]
	Plastic output will double in the coming decades. This new book traces how Plastic output will double in the coming decades. This new book traces howEvery trip to the store, drink at a restaurant, or discard of a recyclable item can feel like a small moral referendum. Bring the reusable bag. Skip the straw. Rinse the yogurt cup. For years, that was how Beth Gardiner thought about plastic, too: a matter of personal responsibility. Then, she came across a number that stopped her cold.Just under a decade ago, the London-based environmental journalist read that oil giants such as Exxon and Shell were planning to invest as much as $180 billion in new plastic production in the United States alone, with projections to increase output by as much as 40% in the coming decades. The revelation—that even as consumers tried to cut back, the industry was preparing to double down on single-use packaging—became the seed of Gardiner’s book, “Plastic Inc.” The years that followed took her from Gulf Coast petrochemical corridors to recycling facilities and corporate boardrooms in a bid to better understand how petrochemical and consumer-goods companies built an economy around disposable plastic; that now underpins so much of everyday life.In this article from Atmos, Gardiner speaks about her research tracing how petrochemical companies became central to the future of fossil fuels, how litter campaigns reframed plastic as a consumer problem rather than a production one, and why she believes the real leverage lies in policies that shift responsibility back to the companies making the material in the first place.Atmos: What set you on the path to reporting and writing “Plastic Inc.”?Beth Gardiner: I was always one of those people who brought reusable bags to the grocery store and felt a little guilty if I forgot them and had to use plastic. I carried a water bottle, and hated throwing bottles out or dealing with excess packaging. That’s just sort of me. And I know a lot of people feel that same distress about how much plastic is in our lives. That was the background.Then, about seven or eight years ago, I read an article in The Guardian saying that huge companies like Exxon and Shell were planning to pour $180 or $200 billion into making more plastic in the U.S., with projections to increase production by 40% or 50%. That felt like a gut punch. Here I was, like so many others, trying to use less plastic, and meanwhile, there was this massive tide of corporate power pushing in the opposite direction. That specific article linked this surge to fracking, which has driven a plastic production boom in the U.S., but it’s part of a bigger global picture. Plastic production has been rising steadily since World War II and is projected to continue increasing on that same trajectory.I didn’t literally wake up the next day and start writing. But when I think about it, that moment, more than anything, was the origin of the book. Because, as an environmental writer, that gap touched on something I find so pervasive in people’s understanding of environmental issues. When we talk about climate change or air pollution—as I did in my first book, “Choked”—people ask, “What can I do? How can we fix this?” That impulse is good, but it also reflects how much we focus on our own actions or the actions of people around us. Our carbon footprints, our flights, our diets. Meanwhile, the systems we live in are shaped by gigantic, wealthy corporations.Plastic makes that dynamic especially tangible. We see it when we open our Amazon package, we hold it, we throw it away. And for so many people—and I hear this when I talk to friends and people I know about this book—it’s so distressing. But that visibility can distract us from the bigger question: Who is driving the problem in the first place?Atmos: In the book, you write that oil and petrochemical giants are “hiding in plain sight.” Given how prolific plastic is in every part of our life, how have they managed to stay out of the public story for so long?Gardiner: Part of the reason, I think, is that the companies at the center of plastic production—the oil and petrochemical firms—aren’t consumer-facing. You’re not buying a plastic bottle from INEOS or ExxonMobil. You’re buying it from a supermarket, or from Coke or Pepsi. So when the public does focus on corporate responsibility for plastic, it tends to land on retailers like Amazon and supermarkets, or on consumer brands, like the companies selling shampoo, snacks, or bottled drinks, rather than on the Exxons and Shells supplying the raw materials.With climate change, people are now used to thinking of big oil as the villain. With plastic, there’s more distance. And these companies aren’t exactly advertising their role. Whether it’s Exxon or Shell, or petrochemical-focused giants like INEOS or Dow, these are all major plastic makers. But they don’t need a public profile because they aren’t selling directly to us.There’s also the broader issue that we don’t always see the system we live in because we’re so accustomed to it. Plastic can feel especially disconnected from its origins. I’ve been writing about climate and oil for 15 or 20 years, and even I had a moment of realizing I didn’t quite know where plastic “comes from” in any intuitive way. I could look at a table, piece of paper, or cardboard and think: tree. But a toothbrush or a water bottle doesn’t cue the same mental link.Most of us have lived our entire lives surrounded by plastic. Its presence has been growing and growing for decades. And because it’s just so much part of our world and our surroundings, we don’t always question it or stop to ask how it got here in the first place. MARK FELIX // AFP via Getty Images Atmos: How crucial is plastic to the oil industry’s future, really? And can you explain why that is?Gardiner: Plastic has become increasingly important to oil and gas companies for a few reasons. First, the basic trajectory is relentless. Since the 1940s and 1950s, when plastic began to take hold in consumer life, production has gone up, up, up. If you project that curve forward, which is essentially the industry’s plan, global plastic output is on track to double or even triple in the coming decades.The second reason is profit. A lot of plastics are made from chemicals that can be byproducts of oil and gas extraction, and plastic gives companies a way to monetize materials that might otherwise be treated as waste. Once firms invest billions to build petrochemical plants that turn those feedstocks into plastic, the incentive is to keep those plants running at full capacity to recoup the investment.But there is also a newer pressure shaping this shift. Even the largest oil and gas companies can see, as well as anyone, that their long-term future is threatened by No. 1, climate action, and No. 2, by the fact that they are being economically outperformed by clean energy. Solar has today become among the cheapest forms of energy. Electric vehicles are scaling quickly, with China cranking them out at enormous volume and exporting them globally, whether it’s buses, cars, or e-bikes. That threatens the industry’s ability to continue profiting from the sale of oil and gas as fuel. Petrochemicals, including plastics, are therefore becoming a larger and more strategic source of profit. Companies are even retooling refineries so that a greater share of each barrel of crude is converted into petrochemicals instead of gasoline or diesel. In other words, plastics help make each barrel of oil or each unit of methane gas more profitable for these companies.So the push for plastic reflects both the industry’s modus operandi—more production means more money—and a growing anxiety about a future in which demand for fossil fuels as fuel may flatten and eventually decline. The industry’s response has never been, “Let’s jump into solar and wind and electric vehicles.” It’s not profitable enough to sell renewable energy. Their answer has been to continue drilling oil and gas and find ways to make that stay profitable.Atmos: When you look at the numbers, where is the growth concentrated?Gardiner: If you ask the industry, it will say the big drive is rising demand in lower- and middle-income countries; that consumers in the Global South are getting wealthier and want the same goods the Global North has, like refrigerators, phones, laptops, cars, packaged products. There is some truth to that. But it’s also true that multinationals are aggressively expanding disposable packaging in those markets—pushed by petrochemical producers, major brands, retailers, and food and beverage companies. With the Global North already saturated with plastic, the Global South has become the next frontier for single-use growth.It’s also worth questioning the premise that plastic expansion is simply demand-driven. Plastic has an unusual ability to invert the normal relationship between supply and demand. The industry says, “Customers are demanding plastic, we are just fulfilling that demand,” but it’s not quite like that. Plastic is produced in tremendous volumes at extremely low cost, and that cheapness makes it easy to flood markets and invent new uses for it.Most consumers aren’t asking for plastic in the first place. When you buy bananas, you’re buying bananas, not plastic wrap. When you order from Amazon, you’re not requesting layers of packaging. When you eat at a restaurant, you’re not demanding throwaway cups and cutlery, even if you’re eating in. Those choices are enabled by a material that is very cheap, and by a business model that rewards volume. Low price, high throughput. The more plastic producers can push into the system, the more it gets adopted as default. That’s why the problem can’t be understood as a matter of individual consumer choice. It’s fundamentally supply-driven, which means regulation and accountability have to focus on producers, not on consumers.Atmos: Even so, as you describe in the book, litter campaigns have largely shifted that responsibility onto consumers. Can you explain how those public narratives and accountability structures around plastic were changed, and who benefited?Gardiner: It’s almost the prototype for modern greenwashing. Those litter campaigns succeeded so well in confusing our understanding of what the problem was and who was driving it. One thing they did was minimize the issue. The message these companies wanted the public to accept was that “too much plastic” wasn’t the problem; the problem was where it ended up. And that’s still the messaging around ocean plastics today, that the issue is improper disposal.That’s not to say litter isn’t a real problem. Of course it is. But the campaigns shrank the story as if litter was the only problem. And then, of course, they also shifted the blame. It’s not us, the big companies who are selling and profiting from plastic, who are responsible for this crisis, it’s you, the individual, or a few irresponsible individuals, who aren’t managing it properly. In that way, they managed to drape themselves in civic-mindedness while pushing responsibility onto all of us.Meanwhile, these companies have routinely fought efforts to make them pay for the waste they create. Take the shift from returnable glass bottles to disposable packaging as an example. When Coke sold drinks in refillable glass bottles, companies had to collect, clean, reuse, and resell them. That’s expensive for them because it requires labor, equipment, and logistics. They would much rather sell it in a plastic bottle, which then becomes the consumer’s problem or the problem of local governments. In this scenario, consumers are charged with managing and disposing of these products through trash collectors or through local taxes.So the campaigns changed how people talked about plastic, yes, but they also reframed plastic as a waste-management problem rather than a production problem, and as a public responsibility rather than a corporate one. Decades later, that logic still shapes the debate: People ask what consumers should do, or how municipalities can raise recycling rates, instead of why companies are pushing so much disposable plastic into the marketplace in the first place.And by the way, it isn’t cheaper. We’re just the ones paying the price difference. When companies moved from returnable bottles to throwaways, whether that’s in aluminum cans or plastic bottles, consumers ended up paying more at the register and again as taxpayers to handle the waste. It was a tremendous shift of both blame and responsibility, and a fundamental reframe of what the problem was in the first place.Atmos: It’s startling when you put it that way, and when you think about the long shadow that the plastics industry casts over so many other sectors. From your perspective, after so much reporting in this space, if the goal is to reduce production, which policy tools have the most leverage?Gardiner: I’m not a policy expert; I’m a journalist. But the tool you hear advocates return to most often is extended producer responsibility, or EPR. It’s already been enacted to different degrees and in different ways in different countries and in a couple of U.S. states, as well.The idea with EPR is to reverse the dynamic we’ve been talking about, which is that these companies have shifted the costs of waste onto the public and off their own books. EPR puts responsibility back on producers by requiring consumer goods companies to help fund what happens to their packaging when it becomes waste. That money can help pay for recycling programs, waste collection, and waste management—and the expense is also meant to create an incentive for companies to use less plastic in the first place.The industry has fought EPR for decades, and when it looks inevitable, it often tries to shape the details so the policy appears meaningful without forcing real change. With measures like this, the devil is in the details and in these tiny definitions of exactly how a new system is going to work.Beyond EPR, there are other measures. One that was part of the Global Plastics Treaty conversation—which, if I understand correctly, is now going nowhere—is tighter regulation to deal with the health effects of the chemicals used in plastic, many of which are pretty well understood now. The European Union has taken a lot of steps, like incentivizing reusability by encouraging or requiring retailers to devote space to refill systems and reusable containers. It has also taken steps to require reuse targets for certain kinds of packaging, including business-to-business shipping and some e-commerce packaging.What history shows is that voluntary corporate promises don’t get you very far. Companies understand public concern, so they say the right things; sometimes they’ll shave off small amounts of plastic. But meaningful change tends to come from mandatory rules, whether it’s local, state, or national policy, or coordinated action through transnational blocs like the EU.There are also narrower tools, like bans on specific items, fees on bags, and restrictions on certain forms of packaging. Those aren’t the whole answer, but they can be a start, and they can shift norms by showing that alternatives are workable. But broadly speaking, it really comes down to one principle: putting the onus back on producers.This story was produced by Atmos and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	What gets reported to Dun & Bradstreet from business credit cards? What gets reported to Dun & Bradstreet from business credit cards?Most business owners assume that opening a business credit card automatically starts building their D&B credit file. It doesn't. Whether your card reports to Dun & Bradstreet at all depends entirely on which issuer you choose and whether that issuer shares positive payment activity or only flags you when something goes wrong.Dun & Bradstreet is the largest and most widely recognized business credit bureau in the United States. Unlike Experian and Equifax, which track both personal and business credit, D&B focuses exclusively on businesses. Lenders, suppliers, government agencies, and potential partners routinely pull D&B reports when deciding whether to extend financing, approve vendor terms, or enter into contracts. At the center of D&B's credit system is the DUNS number, a unique nine-digit identifier assigned to every business in its database. Before any credit activity can appear on your D&B file, your business needs one. Getting a DUNS number is free and typically takes about 30 business days. Once it's active, D&B uses incoming data from lenders, vendors, and card issuers to generate your business credit scores, the most important of which is the PAYDEX score.This guide from Brex covers the business credit cards that report to D&B without touching your personal credit, how to pick the right one for your situation, and how to confirm it's working.What gets reported to Dun & Bradstreet from business credit cards?When a business credit card issuer reports to D&B, they typically share your company name and legal information, the account open date, your credit limit or highest balance, your current balance, your payment history, including whether payments were made on time or early, and any delinquencies or collections activity.This data forms the foundation of your D&B credit profile. The more business tradelines reporting positive activity you have, the stronger your business credit becomes. D&B won't even generate a PAYDEX score until your file has at least two tradelines and three separate payment experiences, which is why getting the right cards reporting early matters.Why not all business credit cards report to D&BHere's something most business owners don't know until it's too late. Business credit reporting is completely voluntary. No law requires card issuers to share payment data with D&B or any other business credit bureau. On the consumer side, virtually every card issuer reports to the personal credit bureaus automatically. Understanding how corporate credit cards work helps explain why business credit is different. Issuers have far more discretion over what they report and to whom.Each issuer decides independently whether to report, which bureaus to report to, and whether they'll share positive payment history or only negative activity like late payments and defaults. Reporting costs issuers money, and some simply don't prioritize it. Others report only through intermediaries like the Small Business Financial Exchange, which means your data may or may not reach D&B depending on how that bureau queries the SBFE database.The result is that you can pay your business credit card on time every month for a year and have nothing show up on your D&B file. That's not your mistake. It's a structural gap in how business credit reporting works. Once you understand it, you can work around it by choosing cards from issuers that actually report.Direct D&B reporting vs. SBFE reportingNot all D&B reporting is equal, and knowing the difference saves you from a frustrating surprise.Direct reporting means the card issuer sends your payment data straight to D&B at the end of each billing cycle. It's the fastest and most reliable path.FNBO and AtoB both report directly. Your tradeline typically appears on your D&B file within 45 to 60 days of account opening.SBFE reporting means the issuer sends data to the Small Business Financial Exchange, a members-only data cooperative that shares information with business credit bureaus, including D&B. The issue is that SBFE data doesn't flow into every D&B product or scoring model. D&B queries the SBFE database, but timing and coverage aren't guaranteed the same way direct reporting is. Bank of America and U.S. Bank both route through SBFE.For most businesses, both paths will eventually populate your D&B file. But if you're in a time-sensitive situation, like preparing for a loan application, exploring business lines of credit for startups, or negotiating vendor terms, cards with direct D&B reporting give you more control over timing.Choosing the right D&B-reporting card for your businessKnowing how to choose a business credit card for D&B reporting comes down to where your business is right now. If you're looking at business credit cards for new businesses with no credit history, we’d start with a secured card that reports directly to D&B. If you're an established business actively building your credit profile, FNBO is a strong pick for direct D&B reporting every month. If you're already carrying a Bank of America or U.S. Bank card, don't close it. Credit card stacking works well here, since SBFE reporting still contributes to your D&B file over time while a direct-reporting card gives you faster and more predictable coverage. Businesses with vehicles or delivery operations should also look at the AtoB fleet card, which lets you build D&B credit through fuel spending.If avoiding a personal guarantee is your priority, the best EIN-only business credit cards fit that need. AtoB is your clearest option, and it reports to D&B without tying the debt to your personal finances.How Dun & Bradstreet determines your business credit scoresD&B uses several scoring models, but the one most business owners need to understand is the PAYDEX score. It ranges from 1 to 100 and measures your business's payment history against your payment terms.The math is straightforward. A score of 80 means you pay on the due date. A score of 90 means you pay roughly 20 days early. A score of 100 means you pay about 30 days early. Most lenders and vendors consider 80 satisfactory and anything above 80 as low risk. To qualify for the best vendor terms and financing rates, you want to be consistently in the 80 to 100 range.D&B also calculates a Financial Stress Score, which estimates the likelihood of a business experiencing severe financial distress or bankruptcy, and a Delinquency Predictor Score, which estimates the probability of serious payment delinquency over the next 12 months. These scores pull from a broader data set including public records, financial statements, and industry data. Your credit card payment history is an input, but it's one factor among many.The key point is that PAYDEX is the score you can most directly influence through responsible credit card use. Pay on time consistently, and you'll build a solid PAYDEX. Pay early, and you'll build an excellent one.How to use business credit cards that report to D&B to build PAYDEXBefore anything else, claim your DUNS number. D&B can't log a tradeline for a business it doesn't have on file. Search your business on D&B's website. If your company isn't listed, submit the free registration form. Standard processing takes about 30 business days. When you register, make sure the legal name, address, and phone number match exactly what you'll use on credit applications. A mismatched address can block incoming tradeline data.Once your DUNS number is confirmed, you're ready to build business credit in earnest. Knowing how to apply for a business credit card that reports directly to D&B is the next step. Fund any required deposit for secured cards at an amount that reflects your actual business spending. D&B gives more weight to tradelines with higher credit limits, so a $5,000 secured card will contribute more to your profile than a $500 one, even if monthly spending is similar.Then use the card every month without fail. Assign one recurring business expense to the card, whether that's a software subscription, phone bill, or supply order. Pay the balance two days after the charge posts rather than waiting for the statement due date. Paying early is one of the fastest ways to move your PAYDEX score from good to excellent.After two billing cycles, pull your D&B file through Nav, CreditSignal, or D&B's own portal to confirm the tradeline has posted. If it hasn't, call your card issuer's business credit team to verify they have your correct DUNS number on file.To generate your first PAYDEX score, you'll need at least two tradelines and three payment experiences on your D&B file. Your credit card covers the first tradeline. Add two or three net-30 vendor accounts that report to D&B and pay each invoice within a week of receipt. Most businesses hit the PAYDEX threshold within 90 to 120 days of their first tradeline posting.How to check if your business credit card is reporting to D&BKnowing how to check your business credit score and verify tradeline activity is a step most business owners skip, and it's one of the most common reasons D&B credit building stalls. Issuer policies change, DUNS number mismatches happen, and some cards that claim to report to D&B actually only share data through channels that don't always reach your specific D&B file.Step 1: Wait two billing cyclesWait 60 days after opening the account before pulling your report. That's two billing cycles, which gives the issuer enough time to submit data and D&B enough time to process it. Pulling too early is one of the most common reasons business owners incorrectly conclude their card isn't reporting, when the data may simply be in transit. If you opened a secured card, also make sure your first statement has already closed before you start the clock, since some issuers don't transmit data until the account has at least one complete billing cycle of activity.Step 2: Pull your D&B filePull your file through CreditSignal, which is D&B's free monitoring tool, or D&B's paid portal for full report access. CreditSignal gives you a basic view of your D&B scores and alerts you when your file changes, which is enough to confirm a tradeline has posted. If you want to see full tradeline detail, including payment history notation and credit limit figures, D&B's paid portal gives you that visibility. Either way, you're looking at the same underlying data; the difference is how much of it is visible.Step 3: Look for your tradelineA successfully posted tradeline will show the creditor's name, your highest credit limit, and a payment status notation. The payment status notation is the most important field, since it's what D&B uses to calculate your PAYDEX score. You want to see it reflect on-time or early payment, not a blank or a derogatory flag. If the tradeline is there but the payment status looks wrong, that's worth a call to your issuer to verify what data they submitted.Step 4: Troubleshoot if it's missingIf the tradeline is missing after two billing cycles, contact your card issuer's business credit team directly and confirm they have your exact DUNS number. If the issuer confirms the data was submitted, open a support ticket with D&B and upload a recent statement as proof. Most missing tradeline issues clear within two weeks once a human reviews the account.How long before a new account shows up on my D&B file?Most issuers that report directly to D&B transmit data at the end of each billing cycle. D&B then processes incoming files over the following 15 to 30 days. That means a tradeline from a direct-reporting issuer typically appears on your D&B file within 45 to 60 days of account opening.Cards that route through SBFE can take longer. D&B ingests SBFE data on a less predictable schedule, and the tradeline may take 60 to 90 days to appear, depending on when the SBFE file is queried. If timing matters for your situation, direct-reporting cards are the safer choice.Should you build business credit beyond D&B?D&B is the most widely recognized business credit bureau, and building a strong PAYDEX score should be your first priority. But it shouldn't be your only priority.Understanding how the different business credit bureaus operate helps explain why. Experian Business and Equifax Business maintain separate credit files for your company, and different lenders check different bureaus. Some traditional bank lenders rely heavily on D&B. Others pull Experian Business. Equipment financing companies often check Equifax. If you're only building D&B credit, you may run into gaps when a lender or supplier pulls from a bureau where your file is thin.The practical approach is to start with cards that report to all three bureaus simultaneously. FNBO's secured card reports to D&B, Experian, and Equifax in a single account. That's the most efficient use of each tradeline. As you add net-30 vendor accounts, prioritize vendors that also report to multiple bureaus. Uline, for example, reports to both D&B and Experian.Once your D&B PAYDEX is at 80 or higher and you have active tradelines at Experian and Equifax, your business credit profile will be strong enough to support most financing and vendor applications. If you want to know how to establish business credit fast, the approach above covers the core moves. Direct-reporting cards, net-30 vendors, and early payments typically get you there within six to 12 months of consistent, on-time payments across a handful of well-chosen accounts.Build your business credit with a corporate card that reports to D&BChoosing a card that reports directly to D&B, Experian, and Equifax puts you in a strong position from the start. Every on-time payment builds your business credit profile across all three major bureaus simultaneously, without touching your personal credit.This story was produced by Brex and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	'Stay Alive,' about daily life in Nazi Berlin, shows how easy it is to just go along Historian Ian Buruma chronicles the lives of ordinary Berliners — including his own father — during World War II. Stay Alive is about the past, but has powerful lessons for the present.
	How to get a golf course lawn at home (without the $50K budget) How to get a golf course lawn at home (without the $50K budget)Want a lawn that looks straight off a golf course? That perfectly manicured, carpetlike grass is a dream for many homeowners. You don’t need a $50,000 budget or professional grounds crew to make it happen.Jimmy Lewis, owner of Jimmy Lewis Mows, proved it. He turned his 10,000-square-foot Utah yard into a stunning golf course lawn. “It’s not impossible,” he says. “It is a time commitment and initially, a financial commitment.”You can also create a professional-looking golf course lawn on a homeowner’s budget. In this guide from LawnStarter, you'll learn what makes these lawns special, which golf course practices actually work at home, and how to maintain that pristine look without breaking the bank.What Makes a Golf Course Lawn Different?A golf course lawn stands out the moment you see it. The grass is impossibly thick, perfectly even, and so green it almost glows. But what creates that look?The 4 Key FeaturesShort grass height: Unlike typical suburban lawns, which are usually 2.5 to 4 inches tall, golf course lawns are cut to 1 inch or shorter.Dense, fine-textured turf: The grass blades are thin and packed together like a plush carpet. When you walk on it, it feels completely different from typical home lawn grass.Uniform, vibrant green color: There are no brown patches, light spots, or color variations. The entire lawn is a consistent shade of green.Perfectly level surface: Every inch of the lawn is smooth and flat. No bumps, dips, or uneven areas that would affect a golf ball rolling across it.What this means: To get a golf courselike lawn, you need to “have the healthiest lawn possible,” says EJ Chea, golf course superintendent at Pease Golf Course in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.You need lawn mowing, proper fertilization, good soil health, drainage, limited foot traffic, and smart watering all working together, Chea says. These are the same basics every healthy lawn needs — golf course lawns just take them to the next level.How to Create a Golf Course Lawn on a Homeowner’s BudgetSo, how did Lewis create his golf course lawn without spending a fortune? He didn’t start with perfect grass. He started with the right tools. “Like anything, the right tools make any job or hobby easier and more enjoyable,” Lewis says.For example, Lewis uses a Toro Greensmaster 1600 reel mower. These mowers cut grass like scissors, creating a cleaner cut than rotary mowers.The only professional help he needed was installing a sprinkler system. Everything else — from growing grass from seed to weekly mowing — he handled on his own.Lewis started with a good grass mix.Before the transformation, his roughly 10,000-square-foot Utah lawn already had an 80/20 mix of Kentucky bluegrass and perennial rye.“I did overseed it a couple of times, but after the first year the grass filled in and thickened up, which doesn’t require any overseeding,” he says.He also made a major change: his mowing height.Mowing StrategyLewis lowered his mowing height from 3 inches to 1 inch over a month or so, he says. The key is to make the change gradually — dropping too fast would have damaged the grass.“Looking back, I could've just hacked it down in a day,” Lewis says. “It stresses the grass, but bluegrass especially recovers quickly.”His mowing schedule: At least twice per week. “Double cuts always look cleaner,” he says. But if his schedule permits, he’ll sneak in a third mowing.Lewis discovered something that many homeowners get wrong.“There is a misconception that the shorter you cut your grass, the longer you can wait between cuts,” he says. “The reality is that the shorter you cut your grass, the more often you need to cut it to maintain a clean look and keep a nice green color.”Lewis grows a cool-season grass mix, but certain warm-season grass varieties of Bermuda and Zoysia also tolerate low mowing heights, giving you a golf course view even in more southern climates.Watering and Fertilizing RoutineLewis keeps his watering simple: Twice per week, even during hot summer months. While the temperature reaches 100 degrees in peak summer, he knows that proper nutrients help his grass handle the heat.“During that time, I keep an eye out for signs of heat stress and add a little more water if needed, either by manual hand watering or running a half-watering schedule,” he says.For fertilizer, he applies it every five to six weeks during the growing season. “I select my fertilizer products based on soil test data,” he says.How does he keep his yard looking green and lush in Utah's drought? “I use deep, infrequent watering cycles and specific fertilizer programs,” Lewis says. “There are also products out there that help with moisture management between waterings.”Weed ControlLewis does weed control only on an as-needed basis. “Once the lawn gets really thick, weed pressure diminishes immensely,” he says.And if he has to spray occasional weeds, he does only spot treatments rather than spraying the entire lawn.Budget for MaintenanceMaintenance of Lewis’s golf course lawn falls within a budget of $300 to $600 a year.“I’m very much within this budget range, which is where I would guess most homeowners would land,” he says. “There are some with larger properties that would likely find themselves in a higher range, though.”Why He Made the Switch“Back then, when I walked on the lawn, I didn’t like the feel of longer grass at my feet,” Lewis says.He admits it took him a while to commit fully to this transformation, but he says he’s glad he did. And once he transformed his home turf into a golf course-style lawn, everything improved.“It's a never-ending journey, but for me it's been a therapeutic hobby,” Lewis says. “I always look forward to spending time outside.“Walking on a 1-inch or shorter grass just feels way better. The kids love it, too!”The 5 Lawn Care Principles (Regardless of Budget) Jimmy Lewis Whether you have a small yard or a large property, these five rules apply to every golf course lawn:1. Mow Low and OftenGolf-style lawns need frequent cutting at low heights.But there’s a limit. “Never cut more than 1/3 of the grass per mowing,” Chea says.2. Water Deep, Not OftenFrequent shallow watering creates weak, shallow roots. Deep, infrequent watering has the opposite effect.This approach of watering deeply and less often encourages strong root growth and improves drought tolerance, Chea says. Your grass becomes more resilient and needs less water overall.3. Feed Consistently, Not HeavilyHeavy fertilizer applications force rapid growth, which means more mowing and potential problems.Chea recommends keeping fertility at an acceptable level throughout the growing season. This maintains steady color and growth without overwhelming the grass.4. Know Your Grass Type LimitsNot every grass can handle being cut short. Some species thin out or die when mowed below certain heights.Choose grass suited to your climate and the height you want to cut.5. Focus on Soil Health FirstHealthy soil creates healthy grass. It’s that simple.Core aeration and regular topdressing improve drainage, root growth, and long-term lawn quality. These practices work better than any quick-fix product you can buy.What Golf Courses Do That You Shouldn’tGolf courses do a lot of things that look impressive, but they’re managing grass with specialized equipment, big budgets, and full-time crews. Some of their practices don’t translate well to a home lawn.Rolling Your LawnRolling helps golf greens play faster and look smoother, but it’s rough on regular lawns. “It’s impractical for a home lawn,” Chea says, “especially if you consider that we roll one to three times per week.”Repeated rolling compacts the soil, making it harder for roots to grow and water to drain properly.Daily Mowing Below 0.5 InchesProfessional golf greens are mowed every day at extremely low heights — often below half an inch. Golf course greenskeepers use specialized equipment and grass varieties bred specifically for this treatment.Your typical lawn grass can’t survive that kind of stress. It will scalp, thin out, or die completely.Chea recommends homeowners use a different mowing pattern each time. “This helps with wear and tear issues.”Applying Preventive FungicidesGolf courses spray fungicides regularly to prevent lawn disease outbreaks that would shut down play.For homeowners, this approach is usually overkill. It’s expensive, potentially harmful to beneficial organisms, and unnecessary if your grass doesn’t have a lawn disease.Using Plant Growth Regulators“Plant growth regulators are used to stunt vertical growth,” Chea says. “This helps maintain consistent playing conditions, and the plant’s energy is directed at the roots versus the crown. Homeowners can use PGRs to lower mowing frequency.”The problem is that they’re very easy to misuse. One wrong application can leave your lawn weak, discolored, or damaged for weeks.FAQ on Golf Course Grass at HomeShould I Use Liquid or Granular Fertilizer for the Golf Course Look?Many homeowners use both. Liquid fertilizers provide faster color and precise control. Granular products last longer and release nutrients slowly.How Do I Get Striping Patterns like Golf Course Fairways?Striping comes from bending grass blades in opposite directions using a roller or striping kit. Light reflects differently off the bent grass, creating visible patterns.What’s the Single Most Cost-Effective Upgrade for Someone Starting with a Basic Lawn?Improve your mowing quality first — a sharp blade or better mower delivers the biggest visual improvement.Transform Your Grass into a Golf Course-Style LawnA golf course lawn isn’t just for country clubs. Lewis proved that an average homeowner, with the right approach, can create that same professional look without a $50,000 budget.You simply need smart mowing, proper watering, consistent fertilizing, and patience.And what does Lewis's wife think of his lawn care obsession? “She tolerates it most days, thankfully. She's my biggest supporter.”This story was produced by LawnStarter and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	From ports to passengers: 10 busiest cruise ports in the US From ports to passengers: 10 busiest cruise ports in the USIs there a best time to go on a cruise? Depends on what you’re after. Great weather, fewer crowds, better prices — all play an important role. So does the destination. But ultimately, it all comes down to this — the port. The port that you choose to embark from decides the trajectory of your adventure, quite literally.In this article, CruiseParking.com shares the ten busiest cruise ports in the U.S.Ten busiest cruise ports in the USPort Canaveral, FloridaAfter the 13% increase in passenger traffic, which pushed the total to 8.6 million in 2025, Port Canaveral reigns as the busiest cruise port in the U.S., leaving the former champion, Port of Miami, in the dust. Currently home to 18 ships from seven different cruise companies, it is also one of the ports that has the most frequent cruise activity. As of 2025, the port sees more than 1,000 annual ship calls; however, this figure is set to increase over the next five years as terminal expansion projects progress.Well, if going on a cruise isn’t on your mind, you can still visit Canaveral, as it offers dining, entertainment, and a shopping district, which includes waterfront restaurants. But, it’s spring, and what’s a better time to go on a cruise than the spring, when Canaveral has services to the Caribbean, Bahamas, and Mexico?Port Miami, Florida“The Cruise Capital of the World,” Port Miami, is not just one of the biggest and busiest cruise ports in the U.S.; it is also one of the largest in the world. Although Miami lost its crown to Port Canaveral as the busiest port in the U.S., Miami still handles an impressive 8.5 million passengers annually. Some of the reasons for its success are its ideal location on Biscayne Bay and its infrastructure, including the massive terminals capable of handling multiple mega-ships simultaneously.Also, Miami International Airport is just 9 miles from the port, which makes it highly accessible. Port Miami is home to major cruise lines like Carnival Cruises, Regent Seven Seas, Royal Caribbean International, Norwegian Cruise Line, Celebrity Cruises, Virgin Voyages, and Windstar Cruises.Port Everglades, FloridaThe three biggest and busiest cruise ports in the U.S. are all in Florida — Port Canaveral, Miami, and the Everglades. Coincidence? Don’t think so. According to FDOT reports, the Florida government invests an average of over $300 million annually in seaport infrastructure and is planning to invest nearly $800 million annually between 2023 and 2027, which is higher than many other states with ports.Port Everglades is a popular port for Caribbean cruises. Because of its proximity to the Caribbean and the frequent availability of cruise lines, over 4.77 million passengers prefer to cruise through Port Everglades annually.Port of Galveston, Texas2025 marked the Port of Galveston’s 200th anniversary, and the City of Galveston made sure that it was a celebration worth remembering. On the occasion of celebrating its bicentennial anniversary, a fourth cruise terminal was opened at Pier 16. A new 20-year plan is also on the cards, hinting at further terminals and infrastructure expansions. With an annual passenger traffic of over 3.4 million, Galveston is one of the fastest-growing cruise ports in the U.S.Last year, the Port of Galveston saw almost 400 sailings served by six major cruise lines: Carnival Cruise Line, Royal Caribbean International, Norwegian Cruise Line, Disney Cruise Line, Princess Cruises, and MSC Cruises.Port of Seattle, WashingtonOnce the spring break crowd settles down, the Port of Seattle gears up for the summer cruise. Alaska wilderness sailing is one of the most popular cruises of summer, and the Port of Seattle is a major hub for Alaska cruises. 2025 was a record-breaking season with 298 calls and 1.9 million passengers, generating an estimated billion in regional economic impact.The Port of Seattle hosts eight major cruise lines — Carnival Cruise Line, Celebrity Cruises, Holland America Line, MSC Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL), Oceania Cruises, Princess Cruises, and Royal Caribbean, with 298 cruise ship calls in a year.Port of New Orleans, LouisianaNOLA is another Port that has been receiving a lot of praise in the last year for its strong growth. NOLA ended 2025 with over 1.06 million cruise passenger movements, marking the ninth year the port has surpassed the million-passenger milestone. While the growth of this port has been consistent over the years, it’s not just these passenger numbers that make it one of the busiest cruise ports in the U.S. Conveniently located on the Mississippi River near the Gulf of Mexico is an advantage, as is being a port with direct access to Western Caribbean cruise routes.Another added advantage is that, while ports like Seattle don’t operate year-round, NOLA does, ensuring continuous ship calls and stable passenger flow.Port of Los Angeles, CaliforniaThe Port of Los Angeles could have taken the title of ‘the busiest port in the U.S.’ if it were the busiest overall port, including cargo and containers, not just cruises. Because, for over a decade, the Port of Los Angeles has been ranked #1 in the U.S. for Container Cargo, handling over 9-10 million TEUs annually. And if we are talking about cruises, the port is a hub for Pacific and Mexico cruises, handling over 1.6 million passengers annually.The Port of Los Angeles currently operates the World Cruise Center in San Pedro, which is the main terminal serving several cruise lines. The major cruise lines are Royal Caribbean, Princess Cruises, and Norwegian Cruise Line.Port Tampa Bay, FloridaIt’s not surprising that another port from Florida makes the list. Unlike the other three ports we discussed, though, Tampa Bay is an exception. It is primarily a cargo port. In fact, it is the largest and most diversified cargo port in Florida. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t cruise activity here. It accommodates cruise ships in its three terminals, situated along Channelside Drive in Tampa, Florida, and welcomed over a million passengers in 2025, setting a new all-time record for the port.While the usual five cruise lines — Carnival, Celebrity, Margaritaville at Sea, NCL, and Royal Caribbean — set sail here, Tampa Bay is also gearing up with new expansion projects to welcome more major cruise lines in the future.Port of San Juan, Puerto RicoWith a passenger traffic of over 1.59 million, the Port of San Juan makes it to the list of the ten busiest ports in the U.S. Compared to the previous year, 2025 saw cruise tourism flourish at San Juan Port, generating roughly $140 million annually for Puerto Rico. San Juan is a popular Caribbean cruise port that serves as both a homeport and a popular stopover for major cruise lines.Meaning, the terminals handle not just embarking passengers but also those who stopover, hence the local businesses, restaurants, and tourism industries centered around the nearby historic district are also supported.Cape Liberty Cruise Port, New JerseyOne of the busiest ports in the U.S., Cape Liberty Cruise Port is the main cruise port serving the New York metropolitan region. It is strategically located in Bayonne, New Jersey, and serves the densely populated Northeast U.S. It handles approximately 1.5 million passengers annually. Since Cape Liberty runs seasonally, ship calls are fewer than at other ports like Seattle and NOLA. Approximately 120-150 ship calls are made every year. However, it hosts the popular Royal Caribbean International cruise line.Summing upTaking a closer look at some of the busiest ports in the U.S. reveals one simple truth: Whether it’s Port Canaveral or the Port of San Juan, the human desire for adventure is unending. There’s something timeless about the pull of the ocean.But out beyond these oceanic adventures, these ports also have a different story to tell. One that’s not about being a starting point for an unforgettable journey. But about being a caretaker of the local communities. It drives local economies, supports millions of jobs, all the while connecting the country to global tourism and trade. In many ways, these ports don’t just connect destinations, but also people, cultures, and opportunities across the waves.This story was produced by CruiseParking.com and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.

Friday, April 3rd, 2026

Thursday, April 2nd, 2026