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

Tuesday, May 5th, 2026
	Calm weather in the forecast for the Quad Cities After some strong to severe thunderstorms moved through Monday afternoon and evening, it'll be quiet for the rest of this week. It made it up to 83° Monday in the Quad Cities, but cooler weather is expected for the rest of this week. Here's your full 7-day forecast.
	OQC Crime Watch Episode 64: QCA man with meth in prison; scammers text podcaster Watch crime reporters Linda Cook and Sharon Wren talk about crime and courts in our area with the latest episode of the Our Quad Cities Crime Watch Podcast. In this episode Linda and Sharon discuss: updates on: To view, click the video above or watch on-the-go on Spotify. The QC Crime Watch Podcast \| Podcast [...]
	U.S. attempt to open Strait of Hormuz tests fragile Iran war ceasefire The Iran war risked reigniting after the U.S. tried to force open the Strait of Hormuz, though a ceasefire seemed to be holding Tuesday even after the United Arab Emirates said Iran fired missiles and drones at it.
	Imagining Magellan This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.Two years ago, January, I stood along the Straits of Magellan with a group of Rock Island college students traveling in…
	This flashy group of Portland mall-walkers puts neon pep into step Krista Catwood wanted a fun way to exercise, so she started a mall-walking group whose unofficial costume was 1980s garb. The festive, all-ages event has exploded in popularity over the past year.
	Minneapolis immigrants still feeling the sting of Trump's largest crackdown yet The impact of Operation Metro Surge in the Twin Cities can still be felt, even three months after it ended. For immigrants, the impact has been devastating — many are at risk of losing their homes and business, and some are dealing with mental health challenges.
	Primary elections in Ohio, Indiana offer latest temperature check on Trump popularity The president seeks to oust Indiana Republicans who blocked a redistricting push in that state, while growing dissatisfaction with Trump's agenda gives Democrats an opening in Ohio.
	Cruise ship waiting for help after 3 people died in a suspected hantavirus outbreak A cruise ship with nearly 150 people aboard was waiting for help off the coast of Cape Verde in the Atlantic Ocean after three passengers died in a suspected outbreak of the rare hantavirus.
	Russia declares a truce in Ukraine to mark Victory Day Russia declared a unilateral ceasefire in Ukraine for Friday and Saturday to mark the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, but threatened to strike back at Kyiv if it tries to disrupt festivities.
Monday, May 4th, 2026
	Twin Rivers Little League concession stand burglarized, community steps up to help Last week, the Twin Rivers Little League was broken into twice, officials said.
	Flavors of India offers free meals to the Quad Cities community They served about 7,000 people during the giveaway.
	Galva community questioning planned carbon capture project The project would take carbon emissions from the Big River Resources ethanol plants in Galva and Burlington, liquify it, then inject it deep underground.
	Bettendorf plans special events for National Bike Month The City of Bettendorf is celebrating National Bike Month in May and Bike to Work Week May 11-17 by encouraging residents to hop on their two-wheelers and explore the community in awhole new way!, according to a news release. Before you go, the Bettendorf Police Department and Bettendorf Parks & Recreation Department collaborated on a [...]
	Davenport speed cabinet damaged, police investigating Davenport police are working to learn more about a damaged speed cabinet.
	What mail access to abortion pill means for now A ruling from the Supreme Court of the United States ensures access to the abortion pill mifepristone by mail for now, and Iowa lawmakers made a statement in the issue. Our Quad Cities News NewsNation Washington correspondent Maddie Biertempfel looks at the ongoing debate.
	DOJ seeking Illinois voter data to purge suspected noncitizens, documents suggest The Trump administration’s lawsuits seeking access to sensitive voter registration data in Illinois and dozens of other states is one part of a broader effort to purge state voter rolls of suspected noncitizens, according to documents filed recently in federal court in Springfield.
	Hundreds cry out as Box Elder commissioners wave in massive data center Community members react to Box Elder County commissioners' decision to support the Stratos Project. (Alixel Cabrera/Utah News Dispatch)Amid boos and screams from hundreds of community members, Box Elder County commissioners unanimously approved two resolutions in support of a 40,000-acre data center campus proposed for an unincorporated site in the county. About 1,100 people filled the Box Elder County Fairgrounds’ fine arts building after gathering for a rally outside. While commissioners had prepared for the crowd, moving to the larger space rather than their regular chambers, they ended up making their decision in a small room away from the public as the group became rowdy. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX “For hell’s sake, grow up,” Box Elder County Commissioner Boyd Bingham told the public, growing irritated as a wave of roars interrupted the meeting, not for the first time. Box Elder County commissioners speak during a special meeting to approve the Stratos project. (Alixel Cabrera/Utah News Dispatch) The angry crowd’s jeers outweighed the voices of commissioners and guests, especially when they spoke about water rights and the county’s tax revenue prospects stemming from the project. Many in the audience asked to allow presenters to be heard, but shouts prevailed throughout the meeting. No one was escorted out, but instead commissioners left the room and broadcast their quick vote on a screen available to the public. Massive Box Elder County data center could increase Utah’s carbon emissions by 50% “Cowards,” some in the audience yelled. Others repeatedly shouted “people over profit.” The resolutions were required by state law to allow the Military Installation Development Authority, or MIDA, to move forward with the Stratos project. MIDA, an entity created by the Utah Legislature to advance economic development with a military focus, needed local consent since the data center would be located on private land without zoning regulations. “Today’s vote is not the end of the process, it is the beginning. If this project moves forward, it will happen in phases over many years. At every step, it will be subject to continued oversight, permitting and regulatory review,” Commissioner Lee Perry told reporters after the meeting. Unlike regular industrial developments, the project was subject to municipal approval before a full environmental assessment is drafted. That study, developers said, will come at a later date, but they are still uncertain as to when. However, during the meeting commissioners said developers will be required to get an air quality permit and then an engineering review, which typically takes 150 to 200 days. Community members protest ahead of a special Box Elder County Commission meeting to discuss the Stratos project, a massive data center proposed for an unincorporated area in Box Elder County on May 4, 2026 (Alixel Cabrera/Utah News Dispatch) The vote comes after commissioners delayed their decision for one more week, saying they’d had insufficient time to review the project. The quick nature of the approvals has become a source of frustration among the public, who have filled public meetings and public comment channels with questions about the potential impacts of such a large development in northern Utah. The data center campus sponsored by Kevin O’Leary, a celebrity investor featured in the reality TV hit “Shark Tank,” is set to house its own natural gas plant to supply 9 gigawatts of energy to self-sustain the center, more than double what the entire state consumes in a year. That power generation will be isolated from the grid Utahns share, so it wouldn’t have any effect on utility rates, developers say. Developers are also planning on using a closed-loop system to cool their equipment, using privately-owned water rights that are unsuitable for drinking or irrigation. But, without a definitive environmental study, the public remains skeptical. Community members protest ahead of a special Box Elder County Commission meeting to discuss the Stratos project, a massive data center proposed for an unincorporated area in Box Elder County on May 4, 2026 (Alixel Cabrera/Utah News Dispatch) James Evans, a retired geosciences professor from Logan, showed up to join the people who gathered outside the fairgrounds to rally against the project. He said he wished leaders had slowed down and thought the decision through. “I was really struck by the cavalier attitude with which everybody involved was making these decisions and these discussions. This is a multibillion-dollar project. They are talking about building one of the largest gas-fired electrical power plants on planet Earth,” he said. However, the commissioners’ decision ended up being what Evans expected. “I think that this unfair process really puts a tremendous burden on these three county commissioners. I don’t think they really have had enough data. They’ve not had enough time, but they have had so much pressure put on them,” Evans said. “I really, truly feel sorry for them.” What’s next Now that the county’s approval has been secured, developers will conduct a capital-raising effort, Casey Hill, a spokesperson for O’Leary Digital said after the meeting. The entire project will be over $1 billion. Its first phase will start in the next few months, he said. Now, the state environmental permitting process also begins, and developers have committed to hold town halls with the community at different steps of the process. With the resolutions, commissioners laid out certain guardrails around the project, including county representation on a project board, in addition to dark skies protections, noise standards and public safety assurances. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE Courtesy of Utah News Dispatch
	Cooler weather set to move back in this week Well, hopefully you enjoyed the quick warm-up over the last 48 hours! It's about to get cooler again for a few days. Highs are back down below normal for the middle of this week, befroe warming some for the weekend.
	Arizona GOP budget clears legislature on party-line votes, heads straight for Hobbs’s veto pen Photo via Getty ImagesThe Arizona Senate voted along party lines Monday to pass a package of GOP budget bills that are now headed for a veto from the state’s Democratic governor. The Republicans who control the state legislature introduced their $17.9 billion budget package a week ago, touting its tax cuts and continuation of existing funding for K-12 education and public safety. The Arizona House of Representatives also voted along party lines on April 29 to approve the Republican budget, which Democrats panned as putting tax cuts for corporations over working class people in need. When the House of Representatives reconvenes on May 5, the chamber is expected to send the budget to Hobbs, who will veto it. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX “The House has done its job,” House Speaker Steve Montenegro said in a statement. “We cut taxes. We protected essential services. We kept spending in check. For Arizona families feeling the strain of rising costs, this budget deserves the governor’s signature.” After the anticipated veto, legislative Republicans and Democrats, alongside Hobbs, will have to work together to create a negotiated budget that can pass both chambers with bipartisan support and get a signature from Hobbs by the June 30 deadline. Hobbs introduced her own budget plan in January, which Republicans criticized for relying on money that the state might not ever receive. That includes $300 million in Proposition 123 funding for K-12 education that would need to be approved by voters in November and more than $760 million from the federal government to reimburse the state for its work securing the border that could go to other states. Voters approved Prop. 123 in 2016, which increased the amount of money set aside from the state’s land trust for public schools. After Prop. 123 expired, last year’s budget bill used money from the general fund to backfill the $300 million. Hobbs walked away from budget negotiations more than a month ago after Republicans said that an extension of the $300 million school funding mechanism is off the table this year. Hobbs’s proposal includes about $800 million more in spending than the Republican plan, and would get rid of tax incentives for the data centers needed for generative artificial intelligence and would tax large sports betting operations at a higher rate. The Republican budget fully conforms with the tax cuts put in place via President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” and would sweep money from numerous funds and make 5% cuts to most state agencies to pay for them. “The fastest way to address an affordability crisis is simple: let people keep more of what they earn,” Montenegro said in a statement. Democrats have deemed the GOP budget philosophy as “corporations first, Arizonans last,” but Republicans say that’s a lie. “This is a serious, disciplined budget that puts Arizona families first,” Senate President Warren Petersen said in a written statement. “We cut taxes, protect essential services, and base every decision on real April revenue projections — not wishful thinking.” As both chambers discussed the GOP budget proposal over the last week, Democrats repeatedly pointed out that the decrease in revenue projections from January to April were largely due to the economic impacts of Trump’s war with Iran. Petersen said in his statement that some of the top accomplishments of the GOP budget were no state taxes on tips or overtime pay, a higher standard deduction, a deduction for childcare expenses and a $6,000 deduction for those 60 and older with retirement or pension income. But the budget also doubles down on increased restrictions and reporting requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, and for the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, the state’s Medicaid program. More than 420,000 Arizonans have already lost access to SNAP since last July, as the state works to comply with federal requirements from President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” That number includes 180,000 children. Before voting for the Republican budget package, Senate Majority Leader John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, said that the new restrictions only cut people who don’t qualify. “We’re reforming entitlement programs to get people who are ineligible off of those programs,” he said. “When we began doing SNAP, food stamp checks, eligibility went down, enrollment went down 47%. That tells me that that system was rife with people who shouldn’t have been on it in the first place.” ProPublica recently reported that added bureaucracy and decreased staff, both due to the Big Beautiful Bill, have resulted in people who meet requirements being kicked off of SNAP in Arizona. Milt Lui, president and CEO of St. Mary’s Food Bank confirmed to the Arizona Mirror that demand for food from the bank’s 700 partners is up 15% in the last year, and one of the factors contributing to that increase is loss of SNAP benefits. “Our partners are hearing more stories about people in line having lost SNAP benefits,” Lui said. St. Mary’s doesn’t have the data to determine how much of that 15% increase is due to lost SNAP benefits. Other factors driving the increase include inflation of grocery prices, the increased cost of gas and unexpected costs like a funeral or car repair that families don’t have the savings to cover. The largest food bank in the state, St. Mary’s is still keeping up with demand, but food banks across the country don’t have the resources to make up for all of the anticipated SNAP cuts, Lui said. Sen. Theresa Hatathlie, D-Coal Mine Mesa, said she was hearing similar complaints from her constituents, including elderly people and families with children. Hatathlie said her constituents come to her saying, “‘I have no food. I can’t afford food.’” “And these are everyday people, and to say that it’s waste and abuse — to just chalk it up to that, I think, is a huge lie,” she said. Adding to the always-difficult task of coming to consensus on a budget with divided government, is election-year politics. “This budget reflects the reality of divided government,” Petersen said in the statement. “While Democrats were on the floor today saying we need to raise taxes, we are instead delivering historic tax relief without burdening taxpayers. Your business and your wallet are on the ballot this fall. Vote wisely.” Senate Minority Leader Priya Sundareshan pointed out that Hobbs’s budget proposal also included tax cuts for working and middle class families, as well as no taxes on tips or overtime. “That’s not what we are objecting to, what we’re objecting to is an additional $200 million a year … in corporate handouts,” she said. “That’s what makes this budget, corporations first, Arizonans last.” SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE Courtesy of Arizona Mirror
	Teacher Appreciation Week freebies and deals: Whataburger, Chipotle and more We rounded up the best Teacher Appreciation Week freebies and deals.
	Farmers market guide for the greater Quad Cities region Farmers markets are the best way to buy local produce and homemade items straight from the source.
	Auxiliary lock at Locks and Dam 14 in Pleasant Valley to remain closed for the summer In past years, the Army Corps of Engineers has operated the lock on weekends between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
	Western Illinois teen turns lawn care hustle into fast-growing business What started as a high school side project has grown into a booming landscaping company. The business is projected to generate nearly $500,000 in revenue this year.
	Congrats to these 5th grade JA graduates! Anybody looking for a fun volunteer opportunity? JA of the Heartland can help out! They just celebrated 70 years of helping students in the Quad Cities area, and they're always looking for help. I just finished up with 2 5th grade classes at Riverdale Heights Elem. in the PV school district. If you want some [...]
	Multiple power poles knocked over on Route 78, several without power Whiteside County Sheriff John Booker said some poles were knocked over by a storm passing through.
	NC House Democrats urge GOP leaders to hear bills aimed at healthcare affordability, access NC General Assembly. (Photo: Clayton Henkel)Days after North Carolina’s Republican-led legislature passed long-delayed Medicaid funding, Democrats are calling for further action on healthcare needs. In a Monday press conference, Democratic state House members urged their Republican colleagues to take up four healthcare bills that aim to protect Medicaid and behavioral health services, better support care for older adults, and keep healthcare services affordable, particularly maternal and cancer care. All four bills were filed last week. House Bill 1175: the Affordability in Healthcare Act, the lengthiest bill, would enact a variety of reforms aimed at expanding competition in the healthcare market, increasing access to affordable coverage, and combating practices that inflate medical costs. Stein signs $319M Medicaid funding plan, extending healthcare coverage in NC Among H1175’s most expansive changes would be the creation of a health purchasing consortium aimed at aligning North Carolina’s various state health plans to collectively drive down costs. “If we align and consolidate our negotiating leverage, we can negotiate down the cost of healthcare in the millions and get better value for our people,” said Rep. Maria Cervania (D-Wake), one of the bill’s primary sponsors. “Healthcare is not a luxury. It is a basic and fundamental necessity.” House Bill 1141: Protecting Medicaid & Autism Services would provide $728 million in recurring Medicaid rebase funding in future years in addition to the $319 million provided this year, and would also create a closed network for behavioral health services. House Bill 1127: the Affordable Maternal Access & Cancer Care Act would create a grant program for access to maternal care and expand the availability of cancer screenings. House Bill 1138: the Aging With Dignity Act would make it easier for older adults to receive coverage for home and community-based living assistance, among other reforms intended to improve their quality of care. The office of House Speaker Destin Hall (R-Caldwell) did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the bills and the press conference. None of the bills have any Republican cosponsors, so they’re unlikely to get a hearing. Rep. Cynthia Ball (D-Wake), the deputy Democratic leader of the House, touted H1138 as crucial for preventing “avoidable harm” to North Carolina’s older adults. In particular, she said, it would establish a presumption in favor of home- and community-based care for Medicaid and require regular medication reviews to identify potential conflicting prescriptions. “For many North Carolina families, healthcare affordability becomes most urgent when a parent, a spouse, or a loved one begins to need long-term care. And I speak from experience, having been fortunate to be able to keep my parents both at home during their years with 24-hour care,” Ball said. “Not many people could. That is when families discover how fragile our system is.” Courtesy of NC Newsline
	2 power poles down on Route 78, several without power Whiteside County Sheriff John Booker said some poles were knocked over by a storm passing through.
	Why cuts to SNAP could hurt Illinois schools Cuts to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food benefits could hurt schools in Illinois. Schools get more state assistance if they have a higher percentage of low-income students.Illinois defines low-income based on a student's enrollment in federal programs like SNAP. Cuts to the federal program mean fewer students will meet the standard while still having [...]
	Iowa bill to raise taxes on some nicotine products advances A bill to raise taxes on some nicotine products in Iowa has reached Gov. Kim Reynolds' desk. House File 2758 would raise about $3 million a year for research into pediatric cancer at the University of Iowa. Nicotine products like pouches and gum would be taxed $0.05 a container.Vaping products would be taxed $0.05 for [...]
	Rickie Fowler, Lucas Glover and Joel Dahmen commit to 2026 John Deere Classic Rickie Fowler, Lucas Glover and Joel Dahmen have committed to play in the 2026 John Deere Classic, set for July 2-5.
	Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni settle dispute weeks before scheduled trial In a joint statement, lawyers for the actors said they hoped the settlement would bring "closure."
	Iowa Legislature wraps up 2026 session: Property tax reform, abortion drug restrictions, vape tax The Iowa Legislature worked past its April 21 deadline as Republican leaders tried to nail down a property tax plan. We recap the latest big topics from Des Moines.
	What’s in the House farm bill—and what didn’t make the cut The U.S. is one step closer to a farm bill after several years of extensions and no new legislation.
	See the looks from the 2026 Met Gala red carpet Extravagantly dressed celebrities and designers made their way up the famous Met staircase Monday evening. The fundraiser is one of the fashion industry's biggest nights.
	Bettendorf asking for input on Kiwanis Park A community input event will be held on Thursday, May 14 for residents to share their thoughts on the type of playground they'd like to see.
	Vape vending machines set to be prohibited in East Moline East Moline is updating its tobacco ordinance, a move that could affect the sale of vapes and other nicotine products in the city. T The City of East Moline is set to update current language in its city code as it pertains to tobacco sales in vending machines in public places. Previously, it was only [...]
	New affordable concrete homes under construction in Muscatine Six energy-efficient, concrete homes are being built in Muscatine. Learn about the pricing and how to apply for this unique affordable housing program.
	Why Iowa lawmakers worked nearly 34 hours straight Iowa Republican legislative leaders made the decision to keep lawmakers working all weekend to get final compromises on major decisions.
	Rock Island Arsenal to conduct full-scale emergency exercise The Rock Island Arsenal will conduct a full-scale emergency exercise on Wednesday, May 6, simulating a tornado strike on the island.
	16 Quad Cities seniors awarded $3k scholarship Graduating seniors at Davenport Central were awarded the inaugural John Parker Whitaker Arts Scholarship.
	Illinois politics latest: SAFE-T Act reform push, proposed redistricting rules, session ends soon Lawmakers still have a few more weeks before the legislative session ends. We recap the biggest topics from Springfield.
	The Waiting Child: Music lover Mason waits for a Big Brothers Big Sisters ‘Big’ More than 200 kids in the area are on the waiting list for a ‘Big.’ Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Mississippi Valley needs volunteers to spend time with them. In this week’s The Waiting Child, Our Quad Cities News' Eric Olsen introduces us to Mason, who loves music and museums. Mason shares what he's [...]
	Severe Thunderstorm Warning from MON 5:08 PM CDT until MON 5:45 PM CDT Severe Thunderstorms with Damaging Winds Expected Until 5:45 PM CDT
	Conflict-of-interest lawsuit surrounds ‘financially distressed’ medical clinic (Photo by David Talukdar/Getty Images)The attorney for a Waterloo medical clinic is being sued by other Iowa healthcare providers for alleged conflicts of interest in his legal work. The lawsuit centers on representatives and affiliates of Cedar Valley Medical Specialists, a multispecialty medical clinic located in Waterloo that, according to one of its lawyers, is currently in financial distress. Three of CVMS’ affiliates — Waterloo’s Digestive Health Center, a gastroenterological ambulatory surgery center; P & H, a company that functions as CVMS’ landlord, and Dr. Ravindra Mallavarapu, who has worked at CVMS since 2002 and is also the majority owner of both Digestive Health Center and P & H — filed suit last week against Michael D. Schwartz and the Schwartz Law Firm of Oakdale, Minnesota. Court records indicate Schwartz has represented CVMS for 25 years, and it’s that representation that’s at issue in the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa. While significant portions of the lawsuit and related filings are either redacted from public view or sealed entirely by order of the court, the case appears to involve not only alleged conflicts of interest by Schwartz, but also financial issues at CVMS. Plaintiffs move to close hearing During a court hearing on Monday, the plaintiffs’ attorney, Mark E. Weinhardt, informed Chief Judge C.J. Williams that an Iowa Capital Dispatch reporter was covering the proceedings, and he questioned whether the hearing should be closed to the public since the discussion could touch on “sensitive matters” that had so far only been raised in sealed court records. “It’s my inclination that there has to be a very strong, compelling legal reason to close court proceedings,” Williams told Weinhardt, “and so I am not likely to grant (your request), but go ahead and tell me why you think this needs to be sealed,” There are parties that we have mentioned in the pleadings -- including in the unredacted version of the complaint, particularly Cedar Valley Medical Specialists -- that are in some financial distress. – Attorney Mark E. Weinhardt “There are parties that we have mentioned in the pleadings — including in the unredacted version of the complaint, particularly Cedar Valley Medical Specialists — that are in some financial distress,” Weinhardt told the court. “The depth and nature of that, I think, is something that, if discussed publicly, could have ramifications for that entity. And so, in order to not create difficulties for it — but also to be completely candid about where it is in its financial circumstances — that was the basis for wanting to file things under seal and to discuss them as such.” Williams told Weinhardt he didn’t anticipate posing any questions about the financial condition of any of the parties, and so the hearing remained open to the public. CVMS separating from Digestive Health Center Weinhardt then informed the court that his three clients are currently in the process “of separating themselves from CVMS, and it’s going to take some time for them to work their way out of that arrangement.” He said the plaintiffs and the defendants have agreed on the language for a temporary restraining order that, if approved by the court, would prevent Schwartz from representing Cedar Valley Medical Specialists as long as there are any pending legal disputes between the clinic and the plaintiffs. In addition, Weinhardt said, the proposed order would prevent Schwartz from representing the clinic in any actions against Farmers’ State Bank, which he described as one of CVMS’ creditors. Weinhardt said that last week the bank reached an agreement with the plaintiffs “about matters between them.” Although he didn’t elaborate, he did say the interests of the plaintiffs and the bank “are now aligned … We believe, therefore, that for Mr. Schwartz and his law firm to represent CVMS against Farmers’ State Bank would result in them taking actions that are detrimental to our clients’ interests.” Lawsuit alleges conflicts of interest The lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order, as well as preliminary and permanent injunctions, barring Schwartz and his firm from continuing to represent CVMS in any matters that include the plaintiffs as potential adversaries. The lawsuit alleges that until he was asked to resign on March 5, 2026, Schwartz was a member of Digestive Health Center’s management board, and had, in the past, represented the center, P & H and Mallavarapu as their attorney — even in matters related to their contracts with CVMS, another longtime Schwartz client. As one example of the alleged conflicts of interest that arose from these roles, the lawsuit claims that last year Digestive Health Center sought to decrease the fees it paid to CVMS for certain services. Schwartz allegedly advised Mallavarapu, head of the center, to write a letter to CVMS, and even provided instructions on the letter’s contents. Then, in his role as legal counsel for CVMS, Schwartz allegedly attended a CVMS board meeting during which members agreed to a reduction in the fees charged to Digestive Health Center. “Mr. Schwartz represented both sides in those negotiations without obtaining conflict of interest waivers,” the lawsuit claims. “After the plaintiffs [information redacted from public view], they repeatedly demanded that the defendants withdraw from representing CVMS… The defendants refused to withdraw. In mid-April 2026, the Defendants suddenly withdrew from representing CVMS altogether, only to, on April 27, 2026, reengage with CVMS.” Schwartz: ‘No breach of duties’ Schwartz said little during Monday’s court hearing, except that “obviously, we would disagree with the allegations in the complaint. There has been no confidential information shared with us, and there has been no breach of duties, et cetera.” Schwartz cautioned that if he and his attorneys “were to respond to the complaint, we would need to disclose information about Dr. Mallavarapu and his employment contract and his medical services agreement and various other things that are best left for the parties to resolve themselves.” At the conclusion of Monday’s hearing, Chief Judge Williams indicated he will issue the agreed-upon temporary restraining order, but told all of the parties he had “grave concerns” as to whether he could retain jurisdiction over the case given the fact that federal rules require that such a case involve $75,000 or more that is in controversy. “What’s brought before me right now is an assertion that a law firm should not represent certain parties,” he said. Williams gave Weinhardt 14 days to file papers establishing the court’s jurisdiction on those grounds. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE Courtesy of Iowa Capital Dispatch
	Negotiations resume on new Arconic contract impacting 1,800 employees at Davenport Works The contract covers approximately 3,400 workers across four cities. The current four-year contract expires on Saturday, May 16.
	Arconic Eagle Cam eaglets have been named Officials said they received more than 175 name submissions. Find out which won!
	Special Weather Statement until MON 5:30 PM CDT Strong Thunderstorms Bringing Gusty Winds This Afternoon
	Negotiations resume on new Arconic contract impacting 1,800 employees at Davenport Works The contract covers approximately 3,400 workers across four cities. The current four-year contract expires on Saturday, May 16.
	Vice President JD Vance to visit Iowa manufacturing facility Tuesday The vice president will visit Ex-Guard Industries with Republican Rep. Zach Nunn and deliver remarks.
	Judge warns New Mexico prosecutors he won’t ‘overreach’ as bench trial against Meta begins New Mexico First Judicial District Judge Bryan Biedscheid warned he would not “overreach” during the May 4, 2026, opening day for a bench trial in the second phase of the state’s lawsuit against social media giant Meta. (Jim Weber/Santa Fe New Mexican)A New Mexico state district judge Monday morning expressed reservations at prosecutors’ efforts to overhaul how the social media giant Meta’s platforms work within the state, as the second phase of a landmark legal case gets underway.SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX The bench trial follows a Santa Fe jury’s March 24 verdict that Meta had violated New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act, and misled the public on the risks of its sites —Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — for underage users’ mental health and risk of sexual exploitation. The verdict, which Meta has said it will appeal, also ordered the company to pay $375 million in damages. Now, in the bench trial, expected to run over the next three weeks in Santa Fe, the state Department of Justice will argue that Meta’s actions constitute a public nuisance. The state is asking for both monetary relief, and for the court to order the company to operate differently for its youth users. Typically, public nuisance cases weigh the impact of activities on shared physical commodities, such as air quality or public spaces — so-called “public goods.” The bench trial will thus determine if the state has the power to mitigate the effects of “public health, welfare, or safety” in digital spaces. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez likened the effort to landmark lawsuits, such as the Yazzie/Martinez education equity lawsuit or some arguments brought in lawsuits against opioid manufacturers, during a news conference Monday following opening arguments. “There’s always a first time for everything,” Torrez said. “I’m happy that the first time social media companies are held to account for public nuisance is to happen right here in a Santa Fe courthouse.” Meta’s attorneys, however, argued Monday that in naming public health as the “public good” that Meta has harmed, the NMDOJ had [stretched] “the law beyond what it can tolerate,” noting that several state supreme courts have rejected similar arguments in lawsuits against opioid manufacturers. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, center, appeared with Jenn Markus, Shannon Heackock, Julianna Arnold and Tamia Woods (right), with nonprofit Parents RISE! at a news conference on May 4, 2026. (Danielle Prokop/Source NM) Torrez was joined at the news conference by members of Parents RISE! a nonprofit that represents parents across the country who say their children died from harms from social media. While none of the parents live in New Mexico, Torrez said they were “all too familiar with the profound impact… that this technology has brought to bear in our communities not only in New Mexico, but around the country.” Prior to hearing opening statements from attorneys, Biedscheid told the parties he held “some concerns” about the New Mexico Department of Justice’s request for court-mandated changes to the platform, and warned he would not “overreach” in his role. “I’m probably not the easiest sell on an idea where I would become a one-person legislature, judge and executive branch enforcer of administrative code provisions,” Biedscheid said. Among other actions, the state is requesting mandates that Meta’s platforms ban infinite scroll, autoplay and push notifications during school and sleep hours; along with capping access for New Mexico children on Meta platforms to 90 hours per month; and requiring the company to identify underage users and sexual abuse material. Additionally, NMDOJ requested that Biedscheid appoint an independent monitor to enforce any court order. Attorneys representing the state said during opening statements Monday that the NMDOJ is asking Biedscheid to order Meta to pay $3.7 billion in restitution over the next 15 years. David Ackerman, a private civil attorney representing New Mexico, said the size of the award “recognizes the scope of the public nuisance that Meta has caused. There are items in this abatement plan for public education, to assist schools, to assist law enforcement, to assist mental health providers who are treating children who are suffering from the effects of their social media use. [This] is about preventing harm from occurring to additional New Mexico children, It’s about fixing the harm that already occurred to New Mexico children and their families,” Ackerman said. Attorneys for Meta on Monday morning restated their concerns that the state’s requests for how the company operates violate free speech for the platform and users, and argued that the state’s demands to the judge are “overbroad, vague, unworkable, dangerous,” and ultimately unlawful. Attorneys for Meta also previewed their arguments that New Mexico failed to prove that social media, not other factors, has caused the harm to children’s mental health; and that the state Legislature — not a judge — should find the funds for addressing mental health care for New Mexico’s children. “The evidence of this trial is going to show that what they are asking your honor to do is to not just be the judge, but to be the Legislature, to be the executive, to be the regulatory agency in Europe, all of it — and we don’t think it’s appropriate,” said Alex Parkinson, an attorney representing Meta. Parkinson also echoed the company’s legal filings by noting that if Biedscheid grants the state’s demands, the company could remove use of its platforms within the state, calling the plan “untenable.” “This is not a PR stunt, this is not a threat,” Parkinson said. Courtesy of Source New Mexico
	State Auditor’s office takes action against ‘misleading’ healthcare plans The Montana Commissioner of Securities and Insurance building is pictured on Monday, March 9, 2026, in Helena, MT. James Brown is currently the state auditor. (Jordan Hansen / Daily Montanan)The State Auditor’s office is clamping down on what it called “a troubling and deceptive business practice” regarding “misleading” health insurance plans from companies that offer poor coverage and bad customer service. In a press release, State Auditor James Brown said his office has received numerous complaints against a company, Strategic Limited Partners, that is not licensed to issue insurance policies in the state. The office has issued a cease-and-desist letter to the company. In a release, the Auditor’s Office said the company has ceased issuing policies in the state. “The complaints came from Montanans who thought they had purchased quality health insurance through SLP, but when they submitted claims for medical expenses, found that SLP would not cover them,” Brown said in a release. More than 130 complaints had been filed against SLP with the Better Business Bureau in the last three years. The most recent complaint came from a Montana resident who received a $90,000 hospital bill the company refused to cover. Another involved a Montana church looking to offer a new pastor health insurance. The plan the church offered the pastor “was presented to them as an (Affordable Care Act) compliant policy” but, in fact, was not. Only after the pastor incurred medical bills did the church find out that the policy only offered discounts on a limited number of services. “Needless to say, this experience has been a source of stress for the consumer’s family, the congregation, and the authorized representative who purchased the policy offered by the church,” Brown said in a press release. “They discovered through their own diligent research that other legal action has been taken against SLP. In turn, they rightly filed a complaint with my office.” There may be other companies engaging in similar practices, the release said. In an effort to avoid consumer-protection regulations, some companies offer plans that refer to consumers as limited partners or employees. “None of the consumers who have contacted Commissioner Brown have been aware that they were designated by SLP as employees or partners of the sponsoring company, RFA Group, Inc., a dissolved Texas corporation,” the release stated. If Montanans have questions regarding their insurance provider, they can contact the Insurance Consumer Service Bureau at the Office of Securities and Insurance. They can be reached at 800-332-6148 or 406-444-2040. “If a deal looks too good to be true, it probably is,” Brown said in a release. “If a health insurance policy offers unusually low premiums and low deductibles yet promises full or unlimited coverage, be skeptical. If a health insurance plan’s fine print designates participants as ‘employees’ or ‘partners,’ find out more.” Brown has targeted wrongdoing by insurance companies during his time in office, recently winning a court battle over the right to investigate Blue Cross Blue Shield, and announcing it had gotten back over $37 million in wrongful billing schemes preying on Native American communities. Courtesy of Daily Montanan
	Office of Child Advocate fights to block DOJ subpoena for trans youth private medical records Katelyn Medeiros, the Rhode Island Child Advocate in May 2024. (Photo by Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current)Rhode Island’s child welfare watchdog agency asked a federal judge on Monday to stop the U.S. Department of Justice from using a subpoena enforced by a Texas court to procure the medical records of minors treated for gender dysphoria at Rhode Island Hospital The 47-page motion to quash — which would void the subpoena if granted — was filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island by the Office of the Child Advocate, an independent watchdog agency which looks out for the rights of children in care or custody of the state Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF). “The medical records of these children contain private information that is protected under the law which exists to safeguard confidentiality, privacy, and the dignity of every patient. When those protections are disregarded — especially for children — it is not merely a violation of the law but a breach of trust that could have profound lifelong consequences,” Child Advocate Katelyn Medeiros said in a statement Monday. Medeiros’ office has, in the motion’s words, “a statutory duty to protect these children’s rights, including their constitutional right to privacy in their medical records and their right to access lawful medical treatment without federal government interference or intimidation.” According to Monday’s filing, the administrative subpoena served by the DOJ on Rhode Island Hospital in July 2025 directly interferes with those rights. The subpoena — which a federal judge in Texas ordered the hospital to comply with on April 30 — demands “an extraordinarily broad range of sensitive information.” The Justice Department asked for “the identities and complete medical histories of every minor patient who received medical care for gender dysphoria at RI Hospital over more than five years,” according to the court filing. “The medical records responsive to these requests contain the most intimate details imaginable: children’s mental health struggles, experiences with bullying or discrimination, family dynamics, sexual development, gender identity, trauma histories, suicidal ideation, and deeply personal conversations with physicians and therapists,” the motion reads, adding that records of children in the care of DCYF may also contain information on histories of abuse, neglect, or foster placements. The motion does not provide an estimate of how many DCYF youths would be affected by this request, but it does explicate clearly the harm it imagines might come to these children should the records be relinquished. “In other words, for a population of children that already lacks trust in the legal and medical systems, DOJ now seeks unfettered access to everything from their Social Security numbers and addresses to the intimate details about their state of mind, their sexual orientation and gender identity, and the course of treatment they chose with their physician and custodians,” the motion reads. An unsigned statement issued Monday by a spokesperson for Brown University Health, the health system to which Rhode Island Hospital belongs, said: “We recently became aware of the motion filed by the Department of Justice and are currently reviewing it carefully with counsel. We are not in a position to provide further comment at this time.” The medical records of these children contain private information that is protected under the law which exists to safeguard confidentiality, privacy, and the dignity of every patient. When those protections are disregarded — especially for children — it is not merely a violation of the law but a breach of trust that could have profound lifelong consequences. – Rhode Island Child Advocate Katelyn Medeiros The DOJ did not immediately reply to a request for comment Monday, but its stance is articulated in its petition to enforce the subpoena, filed on April 30 in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. The hospital received 15 document requests, the DOJ wrote, but at the end of April it had “produced only one six-page document in response,” according to the filing. The DOJ alleges that the records are germane to an investigation of possible violations of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, specifically in the context of puberty blockers and sex hormone therapy. Puberty blockers delay or pause the body’s pubescent processes which define sex characteristics, while hormone therapy involves the use of agents like estrogen or testosterone to induce physical traits that align with a patient’s gender identity. The FDA approved these drugs for select use, the DOJ argued, but “has not determined that any of these drugs are safe or effective for the treatment of gender dysphoria.” The use of “public or private insurance plans” to fulfill “claims related to off-label use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones” could pitch the issue onto federal turf, if any off-label use of these medicines could be connected to misbranding, fraudulent billing or other willfully deceptive prescribing conduct — all possible federal health care offenses, in the DOJ’s view. The DOJ wrote that it needs the records before it can “fully determine the scope of the violations, identify patterns of misbranding or fraudulent billing, or assess whether the conduct was undertaken with intent to defraud or mislead.” The Child Advocate’s legal team — a mix of lawyers from the Lawyers’ Committee for Rhode Island, the ACLU of Rhode Island, and the Providence firm DeLuca, Weizenbaum, Barry & Revens Ltd. — argues that the DOJ’s subpoena is a bad faith pretext cloaked as a fraud investigation. Shield bills could soon be forged into R.I. law The subpoena “represents a barely disguised political agenda in search of a healthcare offense,” the motion argues, with the DOJ demanding first, justifying later. “If DOJ were investigating off-label promotion by manufacturers, it would not need patient records at all,” the motion reads. “If it were investigating billing practices, anonymized records would suffice. There is no compelling explanation for why DOJ needs to know the names, addresses, and Social Security numbers of minor patients, or to read the intimate details of their mental health assessments.” The motion also leans on Rhode Island’s healthcare provider shield law. The 2024 law was designed specifically to prevent litigation from afar and shield doctors against out-of-state investigations regarding transgender health care in the Ocean State. What was the rush to enforce subpoena? The feds elected for a circuitous route toward the data, and issued the subpoena via the DOJ’s Washington, D.C.-based Enforcement and Affirmative Litigation Branch. After nearly 10 months passed without a response from the hospital which the feds found satisfactory, the DOJ sent its petition to enforce to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, where Chief District Judge Reed O’Connor approved the demand with haste. The feds filed a petition to enforce the subpoena on April 30, and O’Connor approved it the same day — within “a few hours,” according to the Child Advocate’s motion. O’Connor wrote that Rhode Island Hospital “has neither filed a motion to quash nor shown just cause for noncompliance,” and that “the subpoena’s demands are reasonable.” According to the order, the hospital had an original due date of Aug. 7, 2025, to comply with the subpoena. Monday’s motion argues instead that Rhode Island’s federal courthouse “is unquestionably the proper venue in which the Child Advocate should bring this motion to quash,” and cites the case’s clear basis in Rhode Island as well as the federal statute which governs “administrative subpoenas in Federal health care investigations.” Per that law, records need not be produced “at any place more than 500 miles distant” from where the subpoena was served. “The Child Advocate was not a party to, and had no notice of, the Texas proceeding, and has had no opportunity to be heard on the Subpoena in any court,” the motion reads. Per O’Connor’s order, Rhode Island Hospital is supposed to comply within 14 days, or by May 13, which is why Rhode Island’s court must act soon, the Child Advocate’s motion argues. “The Court is not writing on a blank slate,” the motion argues, before citing a lengthy list of precedents in which federal judges have quashed or delimited comparable subpoenas for transgender medicine. The DOJ served more than 20 similar subpoenas on healthcare providers nationwide, according to the motion, and seven federal court decisions thus far have swatted down or narrowed those subpoenas. One of those decisions came from over the state line in September 2025 when, in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, U.S. District Judge Myong J. Joun granted Boston Children’s Hospital’s motion to quash, thereby flattening the DOJ’s subpoena. The Rhode Island case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Mary S. McElroy, with a motion hearing set for May 12 over Zoom at 2:30 p.m. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Courtesy of Rhode Island Current
	Budget woes may delay opening of state-funded mental health centers State Human Services Commissioner Stephen Cha welcomed guests to a ribbon cutting at New Jersey's first crisis stabilization center in Newark on April 1, but a month later the site has yet to open. (Photo courtesy of the New Jersey Department of Human Services)A month after state officials cut the ribbon on New Jersey’s first drop-in healthcare facility designed for people in mental health or addiction crisis, the center has yet to welcome patients, while funding concerns could delay the opening of additional sites. New Jersey needs nearly $36 million more to fully fund, operate, and support the five planned regional “crisis stabilization centers,” facilities that are designed to be a less stressful, more effective option than the emergency room, according to a non-partisan analysis of the budget proposal for the state Department of Human Services, which oversees crisis services. The Newark site was slated to open in late April, with four others to follow in the coming months. Human Services Commissioner Stephen Cha told members of the Assembly budget committee Monday that the end of federal pandemic relief funds has left the state with some funding gaps around the centers, which are part of a broader system that also includes the 988 mental health hotline and mobile response teams. Cha said the state is pursuing other funding options, including potential Medicaid reimbursement for these facilities, but securing any revenue will take time. “As that funding has expired, our progress forward is challenged, just to be clear,” he said. “We may need to delay some openings of those five centers.” Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s $60.7 billion annual budget proposal includes $35.5 million for all 988 related services, including nearly $29 million from state funds, roughly half of what it will need for this work in the coming year, the analysis shows. The state will spend more than $52 million on this suite of programs in the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. State lawmakers must approve a final spending plan before the new fiscal year begins July 1. “Mental health is one of those issues that remains at almost a crisis level, especially with our young adults,” said Assemblywoman Carol Murphy (D-Burlington), who asked Cha for an update on the 988 program. New Jersey launched its 988 crisis hotline in 2022 as part of a national shift designed to make it easier for people in a mental health emergency to connect with help. New Jersey lost more than 700 people to suicide in 2025, an increase from 2024, according to state data. Cha said new national data shows researchers believe there has been an 11% reduction in suicides following the implementation of the 988 system. “It’s incredible to think about who is here today, but for the 988 line,” he said. New Jersey received nearly 60,000 calls and texts to the 988 line the first year, Cha said, and that volume has since tripled to 182,000. Staff anticipates nearly 242,000 next year. “The demand as originally projected was linear. The growth has been exponential,” he said. All the funding is available to pay for the 988 hotline itself in the coming fiscal year, a cost of $13.8 million, budget documents show. Sherill’s proposed budget also includes the full $16 million needed to fund the mobile response teams operating in all 21 counties. But the state has only $1.7 million in place for the crisis centers and needs nearly $30 million more to operate all five facilities in the coming fiscal year, plus another $6 million-plus for support services, the documents show. Legislation sponsored by Sen. Joe Vitale (D-Middlesex) and Sen. Vin Gopal (D-Monmouth) would provide at least $67 million for the crisis response programs annually by adding a 40-cent fee to every phone line in the state. At least a dozen states have passed similar funding measures, but the bill has received little attention in Trenton. Cha was among the dignitaries who visited the Newark crisis center to celebrate its pending opening on April 1. The facility is set to offer medication and other clinical care, connections to other health care services, and a place where people in crisis can rest and recover for 24 hours. The Newark center is located on the same campus as University Hospital and would be operated by Rutgers University Behavioral Health Center. According to budget documents, it is still awaiting certification of some form. Additional information was not available Monday. Other crisis stabilization facilities are being created in Bergen, Camden, Monmouth, and Morris counties. In all, Sherrill’s proposal calls for funding for the Department of Human Services, the state’s largest department, with more than 6,000 employees, to increase 5.7%, from $35.1 billion this year to $37.1 billion in the budget year beginning July 1. Of that, $21.1 billion is to come from the federal government, $11.4 billion from state taxpayers, and $5.6 billion from other sources. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Courtesy of New Jersey Monitor
	Don't Let the Dior Hit You on the Way Out: “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” “Hokum,” “Deep Water,” and “Animal Farm” Meryl Streep as imperious fashion editor Miranda Priestly, Anne Hathaway as plucky journalist-turned-personal-assistant Andy Sachs, Stanley Tucci as acerbic Runway mainstay Nigel Kipling, Emily Blunt as snippy ladder-climber Emily Charlton … . Who wouldn't want to watch these people, as these people, one more time?
	Why U.S. troops are stationed in Germany, and what happens if some leave NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Jeff Rathke, president of the American-German Institute, about U.S. troops stationed in Germany, and what happens if President Trump moves some of them elsewhere.
	Rising fuel prices impact River Bend Food Bank As fuel prices continue to skyrocket, the impact is felt in unexpected places. Area food banks are among those feeling the effects of higher prices. Chris Ford, president and CEO of River Bend Food Bank, spoke with Our Quad Cities News via Zoom to share how the food bank is impacted. “River Bend Food Bank [...]
	Severe Thunderstorm Warning from MON 3:33 PM CDT until MON 4:00 PM CDT Severe Thunderstorms with Strong Winds Impacting East Central Iowa This Afternoon
	Muscatine group hosting several events for Mental Health Awareness Month "Make It Ok; Muscatine" has rolled out a series of community events to highlight the month's significance.
	Modi's party takes control of India's West Bengal in key state election The outcome is expected to strengthen Modi's political position midway through his third term.
	Augustana hires students to help students overcome mental health struggles Augustana College has launched Peer Recovery Support, a new student-led mental health program that expands access to care while preparing students for careers in the growing mental health workforce.
	Time is running out as the Bills home since 1973 gets closer to a methodical demolition Power was officially turned off to the current Highmark Stadium on Friday. It is considered the start of the stadium’s mass demolition and is a significant milestone for the project as the new stadium nears completion.
	Ben Uker named new Bettendorf wrestling coach Bettendorf Community School District has a new head coach for its wrestling program. Ben Uker has been hired as the new head coach of the Bettendorf wrestling program, pending school board approval. Coach Uker brings an extensive background of competitive success, high-level coaching experience and a commitment to developing student-athletes both on and off the mat. Uker was [...]
	This lesser-known program could keep Oregonians on SNAP, but there aren’t enough slots Employees with the Oregon Office of Resilience and Emergency Management pack food boxes at a warehouse in Salem as part of a training to see how they can respond to future food emergencies. (Courtesy of Oregon Department of Human Services)Thousands of Oregonians are losing their federal food assistance in the aftermath of a new federal law that requires more of them work, volunteer or receive career training for at least 80 hours a month to receive benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. For those who can’t meet any of those requirements, the state of Oregon offers an alternative, lesser-known option known as the Workfare program. Oregon’s Workfare Program has been around since 2018, and it essentially lets people volunteer at a community organization in exchange for the dollar value of their SNAP benefits. But there are only 27 slots in the program, while nearly 14,000 Oregonians lost SNAP benefits in March because of work requirements. When President Donald Trump in July signed his massive tax and spending law, it removed several exemptions to the program’s work requirements, making it so that more able-bodied individuals without children must work, volunteer or receive job training for 80 hours a month to receive SNAP benefits. Volunteering that many hours isn’t realistic, said David Rubel, a public policy consultant based in New York City. “Using volunteers is a serious responsibility for the community organization,” he said. “Volunteers have to be supervised, and 20 hours a week per volunteer means much more staff supervision time.” And training programs, he said, are just short-term solutions that usually last no more than three months — the same time period it takes a person to lose SNAP benefits if they haven’t met the work requirements by then. Oregon’s Workfare Program, an alternative option, lowers the number of hours needed to meet SNAP work requirements by applying a formula based on the household’s monthly benefit and the minimum wage. Because Oregon’s minimum wage is $15.05, a person would only have to volunteer three hours a week instead of 20 to receive the average monthly SNAP benefit of $180. “The difference in hours means a lot,” Rubel said. The program, however, isn’t widely advertised by the Oregon Department of Human Services, appearing only in a brief worksheet on work requirements. Only four organizations in Oregon participate as Workfare sites, offering a total of 27 slots across Oregon, according to Jake Sunderland, a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Human Services. The organizations participating as Workfare sites include Living Water Fellowship in Tillamook County, the Department of State Lands in Marion County, Siskiyou Field Institute in Josephine County and Rogue Retreat in Douglas County. The state is in the process of adding three additional organizations to the Workfare program, Sunderland said. “Oregon has always encouraged public and nonprofit organizations to consider participating in the Workfare Program,” Sunderland said. “As more people are required to meet work rule requirements, the need for Workfare participants is greater.” Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York and neighboring Washington also offer able-bodied individuals without dependents on SNAP a Workfare option. “They’re doing it for a few simple reasons,” Rubel said. “They don’t want SNAP recipients to fall off the program, which would hurt families struggling to make ends meet. But also there’s a cost factor. People losing SNAP will become more of a state responsibility, because then the state has to dole out more money for their food pantries.” SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE Courtesy of Oregon Capital Chronicle
	REVIEW: Fiddler on the Roof at Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse Oy, “miracle of miracles” the QCA has another chance, in less than 2 years, to take in one of theatre’s most beloved musicals: Fiddler on the Roof which is now playing at Circa 21 Dinner Theatre in Rock Island and directed by Georgette Kleier, who is making her debut at Circa. I certainly hope it won’t be her last visit.
	Did you hear it? Huge boom in Moline a mystery Quad-Citians reported hearing a loud boom and seeing a flash of light over Moline early Sunday morning.
	Animal Rescue League of Iowa prepares to take in beagles saved from Ridglan Farms Ridglan Farms gave up its license to avoid potential felony animal mistreatment charges.
	Supreme Court pause preserves remote abortion pill access in Maine, for now Mifepristone is one part of a two-drug regimen commonly used to terminate a pregnancy before 10 weeks and for miscarriage treatment. (Photo by Natalie Behring/Getty Images)Maine abortion providers can continue prescribing mifepristone remotely for now after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday temporarily paused a lower court ruling that would have blocked mail delivery of the abortion medication nationwide. The emergency stay halts a Friday order from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Louisiana requiring that mifepristone be dispensed only in person, a restriction that would have sharply limited telehealth abortion access across the country. Although the drug has been declared safe in hundreds of studies, its remote availability remains uncertain until the Supreme Court decides to either extend the pause, permanently stay the Louisiana court’s decision or take up the case itself. US Supreme Court issues temporary stay preserving nationwide abortion drug access “It’s maddening to think when we have the best and most effective regimen that the Fifth Circuit could somehow intervene and make that less available for people,” said Nicole Clegg, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. “Medication abortion, especially through telehealth and being able to receive mailed prescription drugs has been a lifesaver for some people.” After the Fifth Circuit’s ruling late Friday, Maine providers maintained telehealth abortion access by switching to a misoprostol-only drug formula. While that option is still considered safe and effective, research has shown it can cause more pain and cramping and it can also require more follow-up care, according to Clegg. On Monday, both Planned Parenthood of Northern New England and Maine Family Planning said they had switched back to prescribing mifepristone remotely due to the Supreme Court’s temporary stay. “Mifepristone is just as safe when provided via telehealth as it is when we provide it in our clinic,” said Olivia Pennington, Maine Family Planning’s director of advocacy and community engagement. “This ruling out of the Fifth Circuit court, has nothing to do with mifepristone safety and everything to do with coercion and control of pregnant people.” Even though providers say they are committed to maintaining remote abortion access regardless of the Supreme Court’s ultimate decision, they warned that the legal uncertainty itself can create confusion for patients. Aspen Ruhlin, community engagement manager of the Bangor-based Mabel Wadsworth Center, said these restrictions were designed to “cause confusion and shame, leading to abortion seekers delaying care.” SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE Courtesy of Maine Morning Star
	How to set up the perfect off-grid campsite (BPT) - The sun is rising over a mist-covered lake. You're enjoying the view from your camp chair while sipping a freshly brewed latte that tastes as if it were crafted by a barista.You didn't have to leave your base camp to get your usual order. You were able to make it yourself using your portable coffee maker and cream from your mini fridge.This isn't a dream. Modern off-grid camping doesn't require you to rough it. In fact, you can bring all your comforts and create a base camp that's your home away from home, whether you're in a tent, van or RV.Jackery — a global leader of home backup, innovative solar generators and green off-grid energy solutions — offers this handy guide on what you need to bring to blend the wildness of the outdoors with modern amenities.Portable power The first thing you should consider is personal, portable and reliable power that you can take anywhere. And forget worrying about dragging around and operating a noisy gas generator. You can easily power and recharge all your electronics and appliances with a portable solar generator from Jackery.Portable solar generators come in different sizes and capacities. Which generator you'll need to elevate your outdoor experience will depend on what kind of camping you're planning to undertake and what sort of electronics you're looking to super charge your trip with.Day trippers and backpackers with base camp setups and campers who want to keep phones charged, run a light and power a small cooler without the bulk should opt for an entry-level solar generator like the Jackery Explorer 1000 v2. This compact, highly portable power station is the ideal choice for those who want "pack and go" power.For weekend warriors, overlanders and van-lifers who need plenty of power without sacrificing mobility, take a look at the Jackery Explorer 2000 v2. This solar generator has the power to run a full campsite — including a mini-fridge, lights and fans — while still being light enough to move around the campsite to wherever you need power.Finally, serious campers with a base camp setup and RV adventurers need a power hub that can do it all, like the Jackery HomePower 3600 Plus. This single unit can power a refrigerator, an electric grill, lights, laptops, cameras, fans and more simultaneously. The power station can even provide supplemental power to an RV. And if you need more power, you can expand the unit's capacity with add-on batteries.You won't have to worry about charging your power stations during your off-grid adventures. When paired with SolarSaga panels, you can capture and store solar energy, so you'll virtually never run out of power during your outdoor adventures. These quiet, emission-free, clean-energy portable power stations make creating a beautiful, functional off-grid campsite a breeze.To elevate your next camping trip with the help of a portable power station from Jackery, consider some of these additions.Electric grillRoasting marshmallows over the campfire is delicious, but cooking every meal over a fire can take a long time — time that you could have spent hiking the trails or fishing for trout.Instead of starting a fire and waiting for the embers to cool enough to cook, break out your electric grill. In minutes, you'll have delicious scrambled eggs, evenly toasted bread and sizzling bacon before your camping buddies wake up.Mini fridgeKeeping perishables refrigerated can be a bit tricky with a typical camping cooler. Egg cartons get soggy and bacon freezes into a block you have to thaw. You can avoid all of this by using a mini fridge that keeps your eggs, bacon and more at the perfect temperature so you can grab, cook and eat without issues.LightsThe glow of the campfire is cozy, but it doesn't provide enough light at night to move around your campsite with ease. Instead of stumbling around in the darkness, bring string lights to hang around the campsite for soft, ambient lighting. Rechargeable lanterns and headlamps are also practical.FanIf you want peak sunshine and long days, camping during the summer is the perfect time to get some sun and stay up late. However, beating the heat is easier said than done.As you pack for your trip, make room for a standing fan, a box fan or a handheld fan. They're perfect for keeping a van or RV cool, bringing a breeze to your campsite or cooling you off during a hike.Inflatable mattressEven with a proper camping pad and cot, sleeping in a tent can be less than restful. Take your sleep setup to the next level by packing an inflatable mattress. Once you outfit it with sheets and pillows, you'll have a functioning bedroom in the middle of the forest.Pro tip: Use an electric air pump instead of a battery-powered one. Battery-powered pumps may be handy, but you'll likely run out of juice before your mattress is completely inflated.Movie projector and inflatable movie screenWant to have a movie night under the stars? You can set up your own outdoor theater with a movie projector, inflatable screen and a laptop. Pick a spot far enough away from your seating, inflate and anchor your movie screen, and wait until the sun sets for optimal viewing.Get ready for a luxurious wilderness experienceBuilding an off-grid base camp that marries the beauty of the great outdoors with modern amenities is within reach. To learn more about how to set up and power a modern base camp, visit Jackery.com.
	Applications open for Arkansas rural telehealth projects to receive federal funding (Warodom Changyencham/Getty Images)Arkansas providers can apply for shares of $55.6 million in federal funds to bolster rural telehealth initiatives, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced Monday. The funding is part of the Rural Health Transformation Program created by last year’s federal tax and spending legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Sanders and the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration expect the state to receive more than $1 billion from the $50 billion fund over the next five years, including $209 million for this year, according to Sanders’ news release. Applications opened money for the program’s Telehealth, Health-monitoring and Response Innovation for Vital Expansion initiative, and applications for the program’s other three initiatives will open in the next 90 days, according to the news release. In October 2025, rural healthcare providers sent Arkansas officials more than 300 proposals for how they would utilize the federal funds for all four prongs of the program. The telehealth initiative “has the capacity to create generational change throughout rural Arkansas” thanks to “more mobile units and new, improved technology to reach patients where they are,” Secretary of Finance and Administration Jim Hudson said in the news release. One proposal that fits this category is Mercy Hospital Ozark’s $9,950 request to improve its telehealth services. Arkansas Children’s Hospital’s request for $34.2 million over five years includes a plan to use telehealth for treating chronic conditions such as diabetes and asthma in children. No one knows whether Trump’s $50B for rural health will be enough The other three initiatives focus on nutrition and physical activity, specialty care and preventative screenings, and educating and recruiting healthcare professionals. Eligible rural providers include hospitals, pharmacists, ambulance services, nonprofits, universities and faith-based organizations, among others. Experts, hospital leaders and lawmakers from both political parties have expressed concerns that $50 billion in financial aid might not be enough to protect rural hospitals and clinics from the long-term impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s spending cuts. Rural providers see larger proportions of patients insured through Medicaid, and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act cuts rural Medicaid spending by $15.5 billion per year over the next decade, as estimated by KFF, a nonprofit health policy and research group. The $1 trillion cut to Medicaid over 10 years would help pay for tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Courtesy of Arkansas Advocate
	Wanted: Man didn’t return from Davenport work release Law enforcement is looking for Alex Ethan Wright after they say he failed to return to the Davenport Work Release/OWI Center Saturday.
	4 steps to saving smart 4 steps to saving smartSaving money sounds like a simple thing to do, but without a real strategy, most people find that extra cash quietly disappears into everyday expenses before it ever reaches a savings account. The good news is that saving smart doesn’t require advanced skills. In this article, Forbright Bank explains four steps to smart saving. With a clear plan and the right tools, anyone can build a financial cushion and watch it grow.Start With a Savings Plan The first step to meeting your financial goals is to create a savings plan. Typically, before opening an account, it’s best to start with a goal.  Are you saving for an emergency fund? A down payment? Retirement? To pay off your car loan?  Having a specific target allows you to change saving habits from good intentions into a concrete mission. A solid starting point is the 50/30/20 rule. That means allocating 50% of your take-home pay to needs, 30% to wants, and 20% to savings and debt repayment. If 20% feels steep right now, start with saving 5% or 10% and scale up as your income grows. What matters most is establishing the habit of saving. Track your monthly income and fixed expenses, then identify where flexible spending is leaking — subscriptions, dining out, impulse purchases. Even if you can redirect $50 a month, that adds up to $600 a year. If you take time to write goals with dollar amounts and target dates, you’re likely to be more successful than if you simply make mental notes. Open a High-Yield Savings Account If your money is sitting in a traditional bank savings account earning 0.01% interest, it’s effectively losing value to inflation every year. The simplest upgrade you can make is to move your savings into a high-yield savings account. High-yield savings accounts typically pay significantly higher interest than traditional savings accounts. Your money is still FDIC-insured up to established limits and accessible when you need it, so there’s virtually no downside for everyday savings and emergency funds. If you choose an account with no monthly fees and no minimum balance requirements, you can start small and watch your savings grow over time.Lock In Gains With a Certificate of Deposit If you have savings you won’t need to touch for at least nine months, a Certificate of Deposit (CD) can offer a locked-in, competitive interest rate in exchange for agreeing to leave your money untouched. A smart approach is CD laddering. Instead of putting all your money in a single long-term CD, you spread it across multiple CDs with staggered maturity dates. For example, you might put equal amounts into nine-month, one-year, and two-year CDs. As each one matures, you can use the funds or roll them into another CD. This allows you to lock in agreed-upon rates while maintaining regular access to portions of your money. CDs are ideal for goals with a defined timeline, such as saving for a vacation next year, a car in 18 months, or a wedding fund. Just keep in mind that if you withdraw the funds before the CD term ends, early withdrawal penalties will apply. Save More With Recurring Deposits Automation may be the single most powerful tool in a saver’s toolkit. Setting up a recurring automatic transfer from your checking account to your savings account — on every payday, without fail — removes the temptation to spend first and save later. Think of it as paying yourself first. Even a modest automatic transfer of $25 or $50 per paycheck builds meaningful momentum. Many employers also allow you to split direct deposits, routing a fixed amount directly into savings before it ever hits your checking account. Pair automation with a year-end review of your contributions. Each time you get a raise or pay off a debt, redirect a portion of that freed-up cash toward savings. Small, consistent increases compound significantly over years, as you’ll earn interest not only on your deposits but also on your previously earned interest. Putting It All Together Smart saving isn’t about one big dramatic change — it’s about layering simple strategies. Start with a plan, move your everyday savings into a high-yield savings account, use CDs for money you can set aside longer-term, and automate your contributions so the habit runs on autopilot. Small, intentional steps taken consistently are how real financial security is built, one smart deposit at a time.  Disclaimer: This article is for general information and education only. It should not be considered financial or tax advice. This story was produced by Forbright Bank and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Davenport West High School on lockdown for about 20 minutes on Monday Davenport West High School went on a 20-minute lockdown after calls about potential violence toward the school.
	Iowa Lakes Community College partners with Minnesota university for nursing education Iowa Lakes Community College has partnered with Minnesota State University, Mankato to ease the transfer process for nursing students. (Photo by Jacob Wackerhausen/Getty Images)Iowa Lakes Community College students looking north to further their nursing education may see their transition come easier with a new university partnership, the college announced. The community college, with campuses in northwest Iowa, announced in a news release it has partnered with Minnesota State University, Mankato to provide students pursuing nursing at the community college a seamless transfer to the university’s bachelor’s of science in nursing program. “At Iowa Lakes, we are committed to creating clear and accessible pathways that allow our students to continue their education and advance in their careers,” said Kyle Norris, vice president of academic affairs at Iowa Lakes Community College, in the release. “This articulation agreement with Minnesota State University, Mankato strengthens that commitment by providing our nursing graduates with an opportunity to pursue their Bachelor of Science in Nursing while building on the strong foundation they receive at Iowa Lakes.” SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX According to the release, representatives of the two institutions met at the Iowa Lakes Emmetsburg campus to formally recognize the partnership, completed through the Minnesota State Maverick Advance Plan. Iowa Lakes Dean of Health Sciences Tammy Shimon said in the release the community college’s nursing programs are “built on a strong foundation of academic rigor, hands-on clinical experience and a deep commitment to student success,” and this new partnership allows students utilizing those programs to move ahead in their careers. The community college launched its first practical nursing program in 1966 and started offering an associate degree in nursing five years later. Laura Schwarz, Minnesota State University, Mankato RN Baccalaureate Completion Program director, said in the release the partnership will strengthen not only the two programs, but the region’s nursing workforce. The university states online that it holds similar partnerships with several other higher education instructions as well. “By aligning our programs and resources, we are reinforcing our shared commitment to developing highly skilled nurses who will enhance patient safety and improve healthcare outcomes across Iowa, Minnesota and beyond,” Schwarz said in the release. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE Courtesy of Iowa Capital Dispatch
	Can a personal loan improve your credit? Here's what to know Can a personal loan improve your credit? Here's what to knowA personal loan may be a great option for debt consolidation, home and auto repair, and much more. But did you know that a personal loan may also help build your credit if you manage it properly?From improving your payment history to adding to your credit mix, OneMain Financial gathered ways to use a personal loan to build your credit score so you can decide if it’s the right type of loan for you.Why having strong credit is importantBefore discussing the impact of a personal loan on your credit, take time to understand what credit is and how it works.Credit is an essential building block of personal finance. It not only determines if you can get a loan, but also what kind of interest rate you’ll receive. Insurance companies, phone and utility companies, employers and landlords may also check your credit when deciding to approve your application or open an account.It’s always helpful to know the importance of credit, as well as how it’s measured and some simple tips to boost your score as you work toward improving your credit profile.Do personal loans build credit?Here are some ways a personal loan can help increase your credit score.Improve or maintain payment historyMaking up a whopping 35% of your credit score, payment history can significantly impact your score. Getting a personal loan and making your monthly payments can help give your credit score a boost. Timely payments can also help you avoid late fees and other charges from your lender.Reduce your credit utilization ratioUnderstanding credit utilization starts with understanding what revolving credit is. Revolving credit lets you borrow money on a repeated basis up to your credit limit without a specific end date to pay off the full amount. Once all or part of the balance is paid, the same amount becomes available to use again.Your credit utilization ratio is the percentage of total credit used compared to the total credit you have available. If you decide to pay off credit card debt with a personal loan, you can reduce the amount of revolving debt you owe, which could lower your credit utilization ratio and possibly raise your score. And since your credit utilization ratio is based solely on revolving credit, a personal loan (a type of installment loan) does not add to your utilization ratio.Add a different type of credit to your credit reportVariety can be good for your credit score. Since your credit mix accounts for approximately 10% of your score, opening a personal loan (or similar installment loan) can also strengthen your credit score, so long as the loan is kept in good standing.Build your credit historyWhen it comes to your credit score, the longer you have an account in good standing, the better. If you need to start building your credit history, getting a personal loan, then paying it on time for the length of the loan, is a great way to get started.Pros and cons of using a personal loan to build creditProsPledging collateral is optional. While collateral, a valuable asset like a house or car, may not be required for personal loans, using collateral can result in a higher loan amount and/or better terms. Remember that if you decide to use collateral, you risk losing it if you fail to repay the loan according to the agreed terms.Quick access to funds. Personal loans can provide quick access to funds, which may be helpful if you want to immediately start paying off your debts and improving your credit score.Debt consolidation. Personal loans can be used to consolidate high-interest debts such as credit card debt. If you qualify for a lower loan interest rate, you can potentially lower your overall interest payments and simplify your debt management. However, keep in mind that a new loan typically means a longer repayment period. While the monthly payment may be less, the total amount of interest you pay over time could be more.Fixed monthly payments. A personal loan usually comes with predictable fixed monthly payments over a specified term, making it easier to budget.ConsInterest rates and fees. Depending on your creditworthiness, a personal loan may come with a high interest rate, particularly if you have a limited credit history or a low credit score. Some lenders may also charge additional fees or prepayment penalties, adding to the overall cost of the loan.Limited borrowing. Unlike credit cards, which have revolving credit lines, personal loans provide the borrower with a lump sum that must be repaid over time. Once the lump sum is disbursed, there are no additional funds available without taking out a new loan.Risk of default. Taking on additional debt through a personal loan increases your financial obligations. If you fail to make timely payments or default on the loan, it can have a severe negative impact on your credit score and overall financial health.Alternative options to build creditIf you're aiming to improve your credit score without taking out a personal loan, here are some alternatives you can consider.Use the accounts you already haveIf you already have a credit card or personal loan, you might not need to apply for a new one. Using your existing account regularly and responsibly and making timely payments may positively impact your credit score. For example, you can use your credit card for only one specific use (for instance, to pay for gas each month) so you manage the balance wisely while keeping the card active.Credit cardsIf you don’t already have a credit card, applying for and responsibly using one may be a useful tool for your credit history. Depending on your situation, you might have various options available. If you're a student in college, you may qualify for a student credit card. Some retailers offer store credit cards that might not require a credit history.If you are building or repairing your credit, you may also want to consider a secured credit card. Secured credit cards require a security deposit from the borrower. The security deposit is refundable and reduces risk for lenders. The credit line of the secured credit card is typically the same amount as the deposit. While these cards may have higher interest rates and fees, paying your bill on time and in full each month could help you avoid interest charges.If you don't qualify for a credit card yourself, becoming an authorized user on a friend or family member's account may help boost your credit score. As an authorized user, the account holder’s account activity will reflect on your credit report. Keep in mind that if the credit card account becomes past due, it will also negatively impact your credit.A credit-builder loanA credit-builder loan offers the dual benefits of building credit and saving money at the same time. With this type of loan, the lender holds a portion of the loan amount in a savings account. You make monthly payments toward that account, and once the loan term ends, you receive the balance. This option allows you to establish a positive payment history while also accumulating savings.Use a personal loan wiselyWhen managed correctly, you could use a personal loan to build your credit. But it’s only one way to help strengthen your score. Building your credit score takes time and effort. Make the right moves, stay on track, and your credit could reflect your efforts.Matt Diehl, Lisa Weinberger and Kim Gallagher were contributors.This story was produced by OneMain Financial and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Burlington's Jefferson Street Farmers Market returns May 7 The Jefferson Street Farmers Market returns to downtown Burlington for the 2026 season, beginning Thursday, May 7. The market will be held weekly on Thursdays during the summer from 4:30- 7 p.m. along Jefferson Street. The market is hosted by Downtown Partners, Inc. and draws an average of 2,000 visitors each week . The market [...]
	A United jet struck a light pole and a truck near Newark airport, police say New Jersey State Police say a United Airlines passenger jet struck a light pole and damaged a truck as it was coming in for a landing at Newark Liberty International Airport on Sunday.
	The permanent impression: Why luxury brands are returning to print books The permanent impression: Why luxury brands are returning to print booksFor years, luxury brands followed the digital playbook — chasing impressions, building social audiences, funding influencer ecosystems. The economics made sense, until they didn’t. As the cost of digital media continues to climb and returns grow harder to measure, a reckoning is underway.Digital marketing promised precision, the ability to reach exactly the right consumer, at exactly the right moment, at a fraction of the cost of a double-page spread in a sought-after publication. That promise is now fraying. Rising CPMs, platform fragmentation, and the erosion of third-party data have made digital increasingly expensive and increasingly imprecise — pushing some of the world’s most storied brands to reconsider channels they spent a decade walking away from.The Acquisition CrisisOver the last decade, the cost to acquire a single customer through digital channels has surged by 222%, according to research from SimplicityDX, a Gartner-recognized commerce intelligence firm. The number alone reframes what many executives once considered a solved problem.The cause is structural. A “privacy trifecta” — the implementation of GDPR in 2018, Apple’s iOS 14.5 rollout in 2021, and the ongoing deprecation of third-party cookies by Google — dismantled, in sequence, the targeting infrastructure on which digital marketing had been built. Each change was individually manageable. Together, they were not. Less data meant less precision. Less precision meant more spend to achieve the same result. The auction price for every consumer eye skyrocketed. Luxury brands, whose model depends on reaching a very small number of very specific people, absorbed that cost more acutely than most.The Tactile DividendThe response emerging across the industry is a reorientation toward what strategists are calling “high-friction” physical assets — most notably, the luxury illustrated book. Both meaningful and strategic, luxury illustrated books are permanent presences in the consumer’s domestic environment, built to do what no digital impression can: endure.Where digital marketing optimizes for the click, this generation of print investment prioritizes customer lifetime value, building what amounts to a Tactile Dividend that compounds long after the campaign spend is gone.Industry observations across the world’s most discerning houses show this consistently: Brands are reaching for to demonstrate the craftsmanship behind the logo, not merely the price attached to it. The economics, examined closely, support the shift, reports book publishing and design company PRINT.Ferrari: The PrecedentThe strategic logic of the luxury book is not new. In 2018, Ferrari established what was possible when the format was taken seriously as an act of brand engineering. Published by Taschen, Il Fascino Ferrari was a 514-page, hand-stitched, leather-bound volume enclosed in a cast aluminum case. Its form is modeled on the cylinder heads of a Ferrari V12 engine, while its chrome stand replicates the exhaust pipes of a vintage 12-cylinder racer, both designed by industrial designer Marc Newson.The Art Edition, limited to 250 copies and priced at $30,000, sold out immediately. Ferrari had created a marketing asset with the demand characteristics of the product itself, proving that a book could be coveted. It could accrue value. It could sell out. It could become, in every sense, a product worth wanting.Lürssen: The Model in PracticeIn December 2025, Lürssen would arrive at the same conclusion. To mark its 150th anniversary — and its position as the world’s foremost builder of bespoke superyachts — the yard commissioned a book. Fine arts photographer Jarmo Pohjaniemi spent ten months documenting 36 vessels across four continents: from the Arctic waters of Greenland to the coastlines of the Maldives, from the shores of Phuket to the storied waters of Europe. Pelorus navigating a freak storm off Cyprus. Kismet. Dragonfly. Each captured not as product, but as testament.It was printed on two artisan papers, bound across 300 pages, finished in a silk slipcase with 12 gatefolds, and framed in narrative by yachting journalist Rachel Ingram. Priced at £250 (approximately $325) and released in limited edition, it was Lürssen’s first book to be published in 150 years of building.Lürssen’s clients do not discover superyachts through social feeds. They are not acquired through retargeting campaigns. They are cultivated over years, through relationships, reputation, and the kind of brand presence that lives in a home—or on a superyacht— rather than on a screen. Lürssen is not a departure from that marketing strategy; it is the fullest expression of it.Scarcity as StrategyUnder former Creative Director Jonathan Anderson, LOEWE brought this logic into fashion. The house’s limited-edition collection hardbacks — most recently Crafted World, released in March 2025, a 636-page retrospective of Anderson’s decade at the house — transform the marketing asset into the object being marketed.The book is, by design, a collector’s item: hand-boxed, finished with a copper Anagram at each corner, priced at $390 And designed to accumulate cultural weight over time.The Retention ParadoxThe case for print is not only economic. As digital noise increases, the efficacy of digital loyalty programs decreases in parallel, a dynamic behavioral scientists have termed the Retention Paradox. High-friction experiences, those requiring time and physical interaction, create stronger recall and deeper engagement than low-friction scrolling. For brands whose core proposition is exclusivity, the medium has become the message.This is not a rejection of digital. Top-of-funnel reach still demands it. But for brands with a high average order value, the physical book functions as a trust anchor at the bottom of the funnel, providing the value-chain transparency that today’s ultra-high-net-worth individuals demand, and moving the relationship from a transactional exchange to something closer to institutional membership.The Artifact EconomyThe conditions driving this shift show no sign of reversing. As generative AI floods digital channels with low-cost, high-volume content, the signal value of a physical artifact will only deepen. The distinction between a customer and a collector is narrowing. Luxury brands that understand this earliest will be best positioned to own their space in the consumer’s life, rather than rent it at ever-increasing rates.The Bain & Company Luxury Goods Worldwide Market Study indicates that the experience-based segment of the luxury market is outperforming traditional product sales — a shift that repositions the coffee table book as experiential gateway.This story was produced by PRINT and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	How new fishing tech can reduce bycatch of turtles and other creatures How new fishing tech can reduce bycatch of turtles and other creaturesOur oceans are full of sophisticated, perfect traps: Nets, hooks, fishing lines. Designed to capture animals destined for our dinner tables, they often catch other wildlife too.This accidental harvest is known as bycatch, and every year it causes the death of millions of marine animals, including whales, dolphins, sharks, turtles and seabirds. Nets and gear can asphyxiate animals or cause fatal injuries; even when the animals are tossed back to sea, they frequently die. Bycatch is also a dilemma for fishermen — entangled creatures can destroy equipment, costing time, money and fisheries’ reputations.Over the decades, conservationists, researchers and fishermen have developed ways to minimize various kinds of bycatch in different fishing stocks around the world. But putting these solutions to work is often a challenge, and many mitigation strategies are never widely implemented, Knowable Magazine reports. Georgia Department of Natural Resources // NOAA Permit No. 20556 Some approaches, however, now have a proven success rate — and more may be on the horizon. Recent research has explored nets equipped with lights; even low-tech tricks like kitting out gear with plastic water bottles show promise of reducing some kinds of bycatch while also being practical for fishermen to use.Despite the challenges, researchers are hopeful. “There are not very many conservation issues that I’m aware of where industry and conservationists and consumers and the fishermen and the resource users all want the same thing,” says marine biologist Matthew Savoca, a research scientist at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station. “Every stakeholder wants less bycatch.”Keeping turtles outThe bycatch problem has always existed. “It’s a conflict that’s intrinsic to the whole idea of fishing,” says marine scientist Nancy Knowlton, marine biologist emerita at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. “If you have something that’s designed to catch animals, you’re going to wind up, almost always, catching some things that you didn’t mean to catch.”Yet mitigation measures can make a difference — and without significantly reducing the catch of the target species, says Cheng Huang, an expert in sustainability ecology at South China Normal University. Huang and colleagues recently assessed 42 different bycatch prevention measures reported in 121 case studies and found they generally do reduce bycatch of vulnerable marine species. But there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution.“Bycatch is a multi-species, multi-gear and multi-scale problem,” says Huang. “Expecting a single technical fix to work everywhere is unrealistic.”Sea turtles, many species of which are endangered, are among the animals harmed by bycatch — and one of the success stories. In the 1970s, populations of the animals were threatened by shrimp fisheries in waters off the southeastern United States. Researchers started working with commercial fisheries to develop turtle excluder devices that provide an escape route for turtles and other marine animals after they’ve entered the wide mouth of trawl nets. After many iterations, and eventually regulations, the devices became widely adopted, and current designs are 97% effective. The devices also save fishermen time and money — preventing the loss of shrimp to fish and hungry turtles.Yet turtles are still threatened by multiple types of fishing gear: Estimates suggest that more than 250,000 of the creatures die as bycatch each year. Gillnets, which hang like curtains in the water, or bottom longlines, which string baited hooks held in place by weights along the seafloor, can be especially dangerous for the animals.Attaching green LED lights or UV lights to gillnets in the water seems to deter turtles from the deadly traps. In one early test of the idea, researchers compared UV-illuminated gill nets to non-illuminated gill nets in Baja California, Mexico, and found that the lighted nets reduced turtle bycatch by 40%.Lighted nets have since been tested for multiple species and fisheries worldwide. A study in the waters of northern Peru’s Sechura Bay, for example, showed a turtle bycatch reduction of more than 60% thanks to LED-illuminated nets. But they have yet to be implemented in fisheries on a large scale. Barriers include cost and the perception that lights might reduce target fish catch, says marine conservation scientist Jesse Senko of Arizona State University. Part of the expense is batteries for the lights, which need to be replaced often.Senko and his colleagues, after consulting with local fishers, designed solar-powered lights that regularly flash and tested the approach in a coastal gillnet fishery that catches yellowtail amberjack in the Gulf of California, Mexico. They attached lights to 28 gillnets, each paired with a gillnet with deactivated lights as controls, for 650 hours in an area known for high levels of turtle bycatch. The nets with lights reduced expected turtle bycatch by 63% while maintaining target fish catch, the researchers reported in Conservation Letters in October 2025.The lights not only reduced power consumption, they also worked as buoys, making them easily integrated into the fishing gear. This is crucial for adoption of new techniques, says Senko. “All of a sudden, the light was more or less part of their gear,” he says. “It wasn’t some foreign thing on their net. It was just another buoy that happened to flash green light.” Lindsay Lauckner Gundlock // Arizona State University Pingers and plastic bottlesAnother bycatch prevention method that’s demonstrated some success is pingers — devices attached to the fishing gear that emit sounds that deter echolocating whales and dolphins. A field trial of the devices in three Norwegian fisheries using gillnets, for example, showed that pingers reduced bycatch of harbor porpoise by 94%, a team reported in “Fisheries Research” in 2023.But pingers can have their downsides. An analysis of pinger effectiveness in waters off the United Kingdom, where they have been used for more than a decade, found that while they were linked to a reduction in bycatch of porpoises, they were also linked with an increase in bycatch of seals, which seem to associate the sound with a potential meal. “It’s like a dinner-bell effect,” says policy specialist Sarah Dolman of the Environmental Investigation Agency, a London-based nonprofit that campaigns for environmental issues.Pingers that transmit at frequencies outside of pinnipeds’ hearing range and are thus considered “seal-safe” have been developed. But the devices can also be expensive, especially for artisanal fishermen, who tend to use lower-tech gear and may lack supportive government policies and investments.Some of those small-scale fisheries may reduce bycatch of echolocating animals with a low-tech approach: fixing plastic water bottles to their nets. Detecting thin, fine nets is difficult for dolphins, porpoises and other echolocators, but water bottles are a more easily detectable obstacle that could help them avoid the net. A preliminary study conducted in Brazil found that using plastic bottles on nets was effective at reducing the bycatch of franciscana dolphins, a threatened river dolphin species. It’s a realistic option, says Dolman, in places where fishermen don’t have the funds to buy and maintain pingers.Practicalities, along with cost, often prevent implementation of bycatch prevention measures, even the ones that work. Many solutions that get developed and tested never end up being widespread.“We’re very good at providing funding for scientists to conduct trials to reduce bycatch, but very rarely do those trials then continue to the whole of the fleet,” says Dolman.For a solution to work on a large scale, a number of conditions must be met, says marine sustainability scientist Lekelia Jenkins of Arizona State University. Policies and regulations need to be in place, and they need to be enforced. And perhaps just as important, the preventive measures need to be practical for fishermen and not add extra time and money to the job. “The smaller the change, and the more it feels like their traditional fishing practices, the more likely they’re going to adopt it,” Jenkins says.The human side of the issue also needs to be acknowledged. “Emotionally, fishermen around the world are beat up and beat down,” Jenkins says. “We say, ‘You’re the problem. You’re catching sea turtles and whales. You are the bad guy.’” Instead, fishermen should be empowered and included in the discussions and development of solutions. “The weight of saving the world’s oceans,” Jenkins says, “can’t fall solely on their shoulders.”This story was produced by Knowable Magazine and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	New bill would narrow scope of Colorado’s landmark 2024 AI law Colorado Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez, seen here at the state Capitol on Jan. 8, 2025, sponsored the original anti-AI discrimination bill as well as a proposed compromise. (Photo by Lindsey Toomer/Colorado Newsline)After months of closed-door negotiations over changes to a 2024 law that aims to protect consumers from discrimination by artificial intelligence systems, top Democrats in the Colorado Legislature in the final days of the legislative session are backing a proposal to dramatically narrow the law’s scope. Senate Bill 26-189, introduced Friday evening, closely resembles a draft measure released earlier this year by an AI policy group convened by Gov. Jared Polis on the recommendation of the Colorado Chamber of Commerce. It would largely scrap the legal framework of Senate Bill 24-205, a first-in-the-nation set of regulations that aims to protect consumers from bias in AI-powered decisions relating to employment, housing, healthcare, insurance and more. SB-205’s provisions, which are set to take effect in June, require AI companies and businesses that deploy their technology to conduct risk assessments, take reasonable steps to protect users from discrimination, and publish detailed information about how AI is used in their decision-making processes. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX SB-189 would repeal and rewrite the law almost entirely, replacing SB-205’s broad references to “high-risk artificial intelligence systems” and “algorithmic discrimination” with a new definition of “automated decision-making technology,” or ADMT. The affirmative “duties” placed on AI developers and businesses to take steps to prevent such discrimination would be scrapped. Businesses deploying AI technology for “consequential decisions” would no longer be required to provide upfront disclosure of detailed information about the purpose of the AI-powered system or the “nature, source and extent” of the personal information being processed. Instead, SB-189 would require a simple disclosure that ADMT is being used, while requiring deployers to provide more detailed information only if requested by a consumer within 30 days of a “consequential decision that results in an adverse outcome.” In such cases, businesses would also be required to provide, on request, information pertaining to an appeals process, including the opportunity to correct inaccurate personal data and obtain “meaningful human review … to the extent commercially reasonable.” If someone is denied housing or a job, loses their healthcare, or sees their insurance rates mysteriously skyrocket at the hands of automated technology, they deserve to know what criteria went into that decision and to have an opportunity to correct mistakes. This bill strikes an appropriate balance of protecting consumers while not being onerous on developers or the businesses who use AI technology. – Colorado Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez In a press release late Friday, Colorado Senate President James Coleman, a Denver Democrat, said SB-189 “reflects years of work to find the right policy framework.” Coleman is sponsoring the bill alongside Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez, a Denver Democrat, who sponsored SB-205 two years ago. “If someone is denied housing or a job, loses their healthcare, or sees their insurance rates mysteriously skyrocket at the hands of automated technology, they deserve to know what criteria went into that decision and to have an opportunity to correct mistakes,” Rodriguez said in a statement. “This bill strikes an appropriate balance of protecting consumers while not being onerous on developers or the businesses who use AI technology.” Task force recommendations AI companies and Colorado’s business community have have bitterly opposed SB-205 since its inception, and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser agreed last month to suspend its enforcement as a result of a lawsuit brought against the law by Elon Musk’s xAI and the U.S. Department of Justice. Polis signed the bill into law in May 2024, but issued a signing statement at the time expressing “reservations” about the law’s potential “to tamper innovation and deter competition in an open market.” The bill was initially set to take effect in February 2026. But after negotiations on revisions to the law broke down a year ago, Polis, Weiser and four other top Colorado Democrats — U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, U.S. Reps. Joe Neguse and Brittany Pettersen, and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston — successfully pressured the Legislature into delaying the law’s effective date to June. In October 2025, Polis appointed an 18-member task force to draft recommendations for revising the law. Its meetings were not fully open to the public, and its format was similar to one previously proposed by the Colorado Chamber of Commerce, The Denver Post reported last year. When the group released its proposal in March, the governor applauded the group’s “unanimous agreement on AI policy to protect consumers and support innovation in our state.” “I look forward to supporting the recommended framework as legislation moves through the process, and commend the Colorado AI Policy Work Group for their efforts to get us here,” Polis said at the time. The People’s Alliance for Responsible Technology, a coalition of progressive and labor groups, said in a statement Friday that it was “cautiously optimistic” about the compromise bill. “We’ll keep our eye on required disclosures to workers, patients and consumers to make sure that they’re protected when AI makes important decisions about their future,” Dennis Dougherty, a PART member and director of the Colorado AFL-CIO. “Coloradans deserve transparency and accountability when Big Tech affects our lives.” SB-189 will be heard first by the Senate Business, Labor and Technology Committee on Tuesday. The General Assembly is scheduled to conclude its 120-day legislative session on May 13. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE Courtesy of Colorado Newsline
	Burlington's Crapo Park vandalized; crews work to repair damage Crews are repairing damage at Crapo Park after vandalism. Officials say a vehicle was involved and are asking for information.
	Kids who were babies during COVID-19 are now struggling with reading and math Kids who were babies during COVID-19 are now struggling with reading and mathAlthough most of them were still in diapers when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, today’s early elementary students didn’t make it through the global catastrophe unscathed.A new analysis from NWEA, an assessment company, suggests that these children are experiencing learning disruptions even now.While kindergarten achievement levels in math and reading largely held steady during and since the pandemic, by first and second grade, students are performing below pre-pandemic averages, according to an analysis of NWEA’s Map Growth assessment data from spring 2017 to spring 2025. In math, at least, first- and second-graders have shown slow, incremental progress. Gaps in reading achievement, however, seem stubbornly stalled, The 74 reports.The performance dips in first and second grade are similar to those seen in older grades, said Megan Kuhfeld, director of growth modeling and data analytics at NWEA, who co-led the research. NWEA Research NWEA Research “The general pattern of stagnation and lack of recovery in reading is very similar in first and second grade as grades three to eight,” Kuhfeld said, adding that a slow recovery in math is also observed in the later grades. “It’s very parallel across, basically, all the grades except for kindergarten.”So what’s happening to students as they matriculate from kindergarten to first grade to cause a performance drop?“That’s the big mystery of the results,” Kuhfeld said.She was willing to speculate about the cause, leaning on anecdotal evidence from kindergarten teachers and elementary school leaders.Chronic absenteeism rates in kindergarten, which are often higher than in any other grade before high school, may mean some students aren’t getting adequate instructional time, Kuhfeld offered, ultimately standing in the way of them grasping the foundational reading and math skills typically acquired in kindergarten.And many kindergarten teachers have reported that students are showing up with more nascent social and emotional skills than their peers in prior years. They have less experience with important life skills such as sharing, cooperating and self-regulating.“Teachers are spending more time having to teach how to behave in a kindergarten classroom — that would normally be the purview of preschool teachers,” Kuhfeld said. “This time spent on behavioral management and behavioral regulation, cumulatively, could be affecting achievement.”At Western Hills Primary School in Fort Worth, Texas, where students’ MAP Growth assessment results generally align with what NWEA has found nationally, principal Andrea Johnson said both factors could be at play.“We’re seeing kids who, if they don’t reach immediate success, we see them dysregulate,” said Johnson, whose school serves students in pre-K through first grade. “They struggle.”She believes that may be a latent impact of the pandemic on these younger students. Many of them had extra time at home with parents and caregivers, when early care and education programs were closed.“They’re used to someone being close and someone solving their problems for them,” Johnson said. “We talk a lot about productive struggle. You’ve gotta let them do it. Give them that mentality, where they’ve gotta connect to that struggle.”She has definitely seen high rates of absenteeism among students in pre-K and kindergarten, she added.“I think they think, ‘pre-K and kinder, they don’t really matter that much,’” Johnson said, adding that she often finds herself trying to communicate to families how crucial those years are for future learning and development.Most measures of post-pandemic recovery have examined the impacts on students in later grades, making NWEA’s analysis a rare snapshot of students in grades K-2.Curriculum Associates, a curriculum and assessment provider, has also evaluated math and reading performance among students in the early grades, finding some similarities and key differences from NWEA’s results.NWEA’s MAP Growth assessment and Curriculum Associates’ i-Ready Inform assessment are both widely used in U.S. schools, reaching a combined 19 million K-8 students. Both measure student achievement in math and reading, but they differ in approach.Kristen Huff, head of measurement at Curriculum Associates, pointed out that these two assessments have distinct designs and methodologies — and that they are administered to different samples — which may account for variations in findings.“From the big picture, we’re seeing the same thing,” Huff said. “Students today who were not in school — some were babies — when the pandemic hit are not performing at the same level as their pre-pandemic peers in either reading or math.”But in a report published in July 2025, Curriculum Associates actually found that students in kindergarten are seeing achievement level drops in both math and reading, and that declining math performance in the early grades is “more drastic” than in reading.At a high level, she said, both sets of findings send a similar message, which is that America’s children are not seeing the type of recovery needed to reach pre-pandemic achievement levels.“It opens up the question of what is happening,” Huff said. “We can no longer, in my opinion, say that that disrupted learning in 2020 and 2021 is the sole or primary cause of what we’re seeing. There is a larger, systemic issue — or issues — that are impacting this.”This story was produced by The 74 and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	One request to delete your data from every registered data broker: California just made it possible One request to delete your data from every registered data broker: California just made it possibleAs states continue to expand consumer privacy protections, the ability to request deletion of personal data varies widely across the U.S. Clym analyzed these rights across states, including California’s new Delete Request and Opt-Out Platform, to show what options are available and where.For years, getting your personal information removed from data broker databases meant sending individual requests to dozens of companies, each with its own process, timeline, and set of exceptions. California just changed that.On Jan. 1, 2026, California launched the Delete Request and Opt-Out Platform known as DROP, a first-of-its-kind system that lets any California resident submit a single deletion request to every registered data broker in the state, simultaneously and for free. Starting Aug. 1, 2026, data brokers will be legally required to check the platform every 45 days and process those requests, with up to 90 days to report the outcome to consumers, or face fines of $200 per deletion request per day of noncompliance.Data brokers are companies that collect and sell personal information, often without consumers ever interacting with them directly. They gather data from public records, loyalty programs, social media activity, app usage, and purchase histories, then package and sell that information to advertisers, employers, insurers, lenders, and others.While about 20 U.S. states have enacted comprehensive consumer privacy laws, with only four of these also requiring data brokers to register with state authorities, the level of consumer protection each provides varies widely. In California alone, over 500 data brokers are registered with the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA), and many operate across multiple states simultaneously.The data they hold can include names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, mobile advertising IDs, financial details, and, in some cases, sensitive categories such as sexual orientation, biometric data, and certain government identifiers, as expanded under California’s SB 361 transparency requirements, which also requires data brokers to disclose whether such data is sold to specific categories of recipients, including foreign actors, government agencies, and generative AI developers.The scale of the problem is significant. The Identity Theft Resource Center reported that 80% of U.S. consumers received at least one data breach notice in 2025. IAPP Privacy and Consumer Trust Report 2023 found that 68% of global consumers say they are concerned about their privacy online. Data brokers operate largely in the background, making it difficult for most people to know where their data is going, let alone request its deletion.How DROP worksThe DROP platform is accessible through the California Privacy Protection Agency and requires consumers to verify their California residency before submitting a request. The system collects identifying information, including name, date of birth, phone number, email address, and device identifiers like mobile advertising IDs (MAIDs). The more identifiers a consumer provides, the more likely brokers are to find and delete a match.DROP uses a secure identity verification process through the California Identity Gateway, with encrypted submission and verification workflows. Once a request is filed, it is queued and distributed to all registered data brokers. After Aug. 1, 2026, brokers must check the platform at a minimum every 45 days and assign one of four standardized response statuses to each request:"Deleted" means the consumer’s nonexempt personal information has been removed, though certain legally exempt data may be retained."Exempted" means certain data cannot legally be deleted under a statutory exception, and the broker must explain why.“Pending” indicates the request is still being processed."Opted Out" applies when full deletion is not possible, but the consumer's data is blocked from future sale or sharing."Record Not Found" means the broker could not locate data matching the submitted identifiers.Brokers that fail to process requests on time face administrative fines of $200 per request per day, and the CPPA has indicated that compliance with DROP requirements will be subject to enforcement under the Delete Act.The patchwork problem: where other states standCalifornia's DROP is the most aggressive consumer data deletion mechanism in the country, but most Americans do not have access to anything comparable. As of 2026, 20 states have enacted comprehensive privacy laws, and while many include the right to request deletion of personal data from individual businesses, none have created a centralized system that covers all brokers at once, the way DROP does.States like Indiana, Kentucky, and Rhode Island added comprehensive privacy laws on Jan. 1, 2026, giving residents the right to request deletion from individual companies. Connecticut, Arkansas, and Utah added further updates effective July 1, 2026. But consumers in those states must still contact each company separately.Roughly half of U.S. states still have no comprehensive consumer data privacy law in place at all, leaving residents with limited legal recourse when it comes to personal data held by brokers. The result is a fragmented landscape where a consumer's ability to control their own data depends largely on their zip code.For companies that handle California consumer data, the DROP system changes the compliance equation significantly. Any business that meets California's definition of a data broker, one that collects and sells personal information about consumers with whom it has no direct relationship, must register with the CPPA, pay an annual registration fee of $6,000, and begin processing DROP deletion requests starting Aug. 1, 2026.Beyond data brokers, the shift signals where privacy compliance is heading more broadly. As Clym's analysis of CCPA deletion request obligations outlines, businesses of all sizes are expected to have documented processes for receiving, verifying, and fulfilling consumer data deletion requests within 45 days, with records maintained for a minimum of 24 months for audit purposes.Understanding what qualifies as a deletion exception, how to verify consumer identity without overstepping, and how to document partial deletions are all areas where compliance gaps tend to emerge.The DROP platform is live and accepting requests as of January 2026. Requests submitted before Aug. 1, 2026, are queued but not yet legally required to be processed. That said, submitting early means brokers will have the request waiting when the enforcement window opens.Consumers who want to get ahead of the process can visit the California Privacy Protection Agency's data broker portal, submit a deletion request through DROP with as many identifying details as they can provide, and track the status of their request through the platform's dashboard.For consumers in other states, the rights available depend entirely on where they live. Checking whether your state has a comprehensive privacy law and understanding what data subject rights it includes is the first step. This story was produced by Clym and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Americans’ views on crime often diverge from actual crime trends, report says Portland police officers stand behind police tape outside an apartment building in eastern Portland, Ore. Americans’ perceptions of crime often diverge from actual crime trends and are influenced by factors, such as personal experiences and economic conditions, according to a new report from the Council on Criminal Justice. (Photo by Alex Baumhardt/Oregon Capital Chronicle) Americans’ views on crime often don’t match reality — and a new report suggests those perceptions are shaped as much by personal experiences and economic conditions as by crime itself. The analysis, released by the nonprofit think tank Council on Criminal Justice, draws on decades of Gallup survey data to examine how people perceive crime and what drives those beliefs. The report’s authors found that, since the 1960s, public perceptions of crime have frequently diverged from actual crime trends. Even during periods when crime declined, most Americans continued to believe it was rising. From 2005 to 2024, about 69% of survey respondents on average said crime was higher than the year before, despite overall crime rates falling in most of those years, according to the report. New federal data reinforces nationwide drop in crime since pandemic peak Fear of crime has remained relatively stable over time. In 2024, 35% of Americans said they were afraid to walk alone at night — the same share as in 1968. The researchers found that public concern tends to track major shifts in homicide rates more closely than broader crime trends. But overall, people’s views about crime and their fear of it have not matched shifts in crime rates for most years, according to the report. Instead, the analysis points to other factors that shape how Americans think about public safety. Household victimization — whether someone in the home has been a victim of a crime — was one of the strongest predictors of both fear and the belief that crime is increasing. Property crimes, such as theft, and people’s own experiences with crime were more closely tied to concerns about the issue than actual violent crime rates. Economic sentiment also played a role. People who said it was a good time to find a job or expected to spend the same or more on holiday shopping were less likely to say crime was rising and less likely to report fear of walking alone at night, according to the report. Political views showed a more limited effect. While people with more conservative ideologies were somewhat more likely to perceive crime as increasing, political party affiliation itself was not a significant factor after accounting for economic conditions and other variables. Higher presidential and congressional approval ratings were associated with a greater likelihood that respondents said crime was staying the same or declining, according to the report. Local conditions, meanwhile, were more closely linked to personal fears than to perceptions of crime overall. The researchers found that neighborhood factors, such as poverty and youth population, were associated with whether people said they were afraid, but did not generally influence whether they believed crime was rising locally or nationally. Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at awatford@stateline.org. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE Courtesy of Stateline
	John Deere Classic adds trio of American players to 2026 lineup Three American golfers have joined the John Deere Classic lineup.
	Colona man accused of punching, seriously injuring person A Colona man is charged after police said he punched someone and knocked them out, causing serious injuries.
	US Supreme Court issues temporary stay preserving nationwide abortion drug access Mifepristone is one of two drugs that can be used before 10 weeks to terminate a pregnancy and to treat miscarriages.(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)The U.S. Supreme Court issued a temporary stay on an appeals court ruling from Friday that was blocking remote access to an abortion drug, restoring access until at least May 11. The administrative stay, issued by Justice Samuel Alito, pauses Friday’s decision by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. That ruling blocked a 2023 rule adopted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration allowing mifepristone, one of two drugs used to terminate a pregnancy before 10 weeks and to treat miscarriages, to be prescribed without an in-person visit with a health care provider and also allowed it to be mailed to recipients in states with abortion bans. “The administrative stay is temporary, and I am confident life and law will win in the end,” said Louisiana Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill in a statement. Thirteen states have near-total abortion bans, including Louisiana. Murrill sued the FDA in October, saying the rule undermines the state’s laws and causes financial harm because the state paid $92,000 in Medicaid bills for two women who needed emergency care in 2025 from complications related to mifepristone. In the years since the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing states to regulate abortion access, telehealth prescriptions of abortion medication have become increasingly popular, with more than 27% of all abortions provided that way in 2025, according to data from the Society of Family Planning. “While this is a positive short-term development, no one can rest easy when our ability to get this safe, effective medication for abortion and miscarriage care still hangs in the balance,” said Julia Kaye, senior staff attorney for the Reproductive Freedom Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, in a statement. “The Supreme Court needs to put an end to this baseless attack on our reproductive freedom, once and for all.” The case could follow a similar pattern to one that played out in 2023, after U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of Texas issued a ruling that would have revoked access to the abortion drug mifepristone altogether. The U.S. Supreme Court intervened shortly after that ruling and kept mifepristone available while the case proceeded in the 5th Circuit appeals court, which eventually decided that more restrictions were warranted, but not pulling the drug’s approval. The Supreme Court officially took the case several months later, and unanimously ruled in June 2024 that the plaintiffs suing the FDA did not have standing, keeping access to mifepristone intact. Responses from the attorneys in the latest case are expected to be filed with the Supreme Court by Thursday, according to Alito’s order. Stateline reporter Kelcie Moseley-Morris can be reached at kmoseley@stateline.org. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE Courtesy of Stateline
	1 dead after stabbing in dispute between third-party contractors at Busch Stadium, police say One man died Monday after a stabbing at Busch Stadium following what police said was a dispute between two third-party contractors.
	6 strategies to grow your savings account 6 strategies to grow your savings accountThere’s no doubt that having a savings account is an important tool when it comes to your financial well-being. You can use it to save for an emergency, a down payment on a home, or even stash a few dollars for retirement. But once you open an account, how can you make it work for your needs?There is no way to snap your fingers and have money saved. The key to savings success lies in developing smart saving habits and making the most of the resources available to you. With the right habits, you can grow your savings faster, minimize risks, and make your money work harder for you.Below, Fifth Third shares a few practical tips to help you optimize your savings.6 Smart Saving StrategiesWhat strategy is most effective for saving money? Whether you’re opening your first savings account, counting pennies to pay for your next vacation, or simply want to grow your emergency fund, you may want to try a mix of these six strategies.1. Automate your savings.Use a set-it-and-forget-it approach that helps you save effortlessly. Create recurring transfers—weekly or monthly—from your checking account to your savings account to consistently save without having to think about it. You can also use direct deposit to have a portion of your paycheck automatically routed to your savings account.2. Set savings goals.To stay motivated and focused, set clear and achievable savings goals. Identify what you’re saving for and establish realistic targets with timelines. Tools like the goal-tracking features can help you monitor your progress. Be flexible and adjust your goals if necessary. Life can be unpredictable, and it’s okay to reassess your plan as circumstances change.3. Stick to a budget.A budget can help you reduce your overall spending. When you spend less, you’ll have extra money each month to save toward your goals. Start by reviewing your monthly expenses and categorizing them into "needs" and "wants." Needs are essential expenses, such as rent, utilities, groceries, and car payments. Wants are nonessential items you can cut back on or eliminate, such as impulse shopping trips or dining out.4. Review ongoing subscriptions or memberships.Subscriptions and memberships are convenient, but the monthly fees can add up. Track your recurring expenses for a month and then cancel those you no longer need. This might include gym memberships, streaming services, or grocery delivery subscriptions. Your savings account will thank you.5. Maximize your earned interest.There are many types of savings accounts, so you should explore what is available. Two that you might want to consider are a certificate of deposit (CD) and a money market savings account. When you open a CD, you agree to leave your deposit untouched for a specific amount of time. In return, the bank pays you a guaranteed interest rate. A money market savings account also offers a higher interest rate than traditional savings accounts and may be a good option if you want higher returns and the flexibility of accessing your funds.6. Use a health savings account.A health savings account (HSA) is a tax-advantaged account that helps you save for medical and health-related expenses. Contributions are tax-deductible, the funds grow tax free, and withdrawals for qualified expenses are also tax free. HSAs can be used for various medical costs, and the funds roll over from year to year. Another bonus? Employers may also contribute to your HSA, offering an extra savings opportunity.This story was produced by Fifth Third and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	What does a digital marketing agency do and do you need one? What does a digital marketing agency do and do you need one?A digital marketing agency helps businesses drive measurable revenue through online channels like organic search, social media, email, and paid advertising. In other words, a digital marketing agency can assist with driving revenue and saving time when marketing a business online.In this guide, WebFX covers these topics to address your questions surrounding digital marketing agencies:What is a digital marketing agency?A digital marketing agency is a team that helps businesses grow online by improving visibility, generating leads, and driving revenue.Partnering with an agency provides strategies and results as an alternative to an in-house team.Types of digital marketing agenciesSo, now you know the answer to the question “what does a digital marketing agency do?”, let’s look into different types of agencies.Not all digital marketing agencies are the same. You need to find the agency that fits your business’s needs and projects.Here are a few different digital marketing agencies you’ll run into:Full-service agencies: Full-service digital marketing agencies offer nearly any service you need, from SEO to influencer marketing to web design. These agencies are an option if you think you’ll need help with multiple marketing strategies.Niche marketing agencies: Niche marketing agencies typically only work with a certain set of clients. For example, an agency may specialize in home services marketing and only work with clients in that industry.Strategy-specialized agencies: If an agency isn’t full-service, they likely only specialize in one or two strategies that they offer to clients. SEO agencies, which only offer SEO services, are the most common. These agencies are an option if you’re only looking to invest in a certain strategy, like SEO or web design.What does a digital marketing agency do?A digital marketing agency helps businesses increase their online visibility, build brand awareness, and reach more potential customers online with established strategies like search engine optimization (SEO), paid advertising, social media marketing, and much more.Digital marketing agencies are essentially experts and specialists you can hire and partner with to create and manage tailored strategies to help your business grow online and earn more revenue.1. SEOSEO is the process of optimizing your ranking in search results to drive more qualified traffic to your business’s website.When done right, SEO helps your business appear when potential customers search for products or services you offer. This means reaching buyers who are actively looking online for what you sell.SEO’s business impact:SEO results also compound over time as your website builds authority and pages rank higher.What digital marketing agencies do:After analyzing your site’s overall SEO health, the agency will typically prioritize quick wins first by:Fixing technical issuesClaiming and optimizing your Google Business Profile, if you’re a local businessOptimizing the pages with the highest potential to show resultsThen, they’ll focus on building longer-term success by:Building your site’s technical SEO foundationsCreating helpful content for your customersFostering trust through partnerships, digital PR, and reputation managementThroughout this process, agencies monitor performance and adjust tactics as search algorithms evolve. That way, they ensure your rankings don’t just grow, but stay consistent over time.2. AI search optimizationAs search behavior evolves, digital marketing agencies are now helping businesses maintain visibility in AI-generated answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.If you’ve noticed your organic traffic declining recently, you’re not alone. Generate AI search is growing 165 times faster than organic search. Your customers are already using AI search to research solutions and evaluate businesses like yours.For example, when someone looks for “best project management software for construction,” Google’s AI Overview synthesizes information from multiple sources into one answer. That being said, this doesn’t mean your business becomes invisible — it means visibility strategies must evolve.AI search optimization’s business impact:Businesses that optimize for AI search maintain their visibility and authority as search behavior shifts. Research shows that traffic from generative AI delivers a 23% higher conversion rate than organic search, meaning these visitors are highly qualified and likely shopping around.While traditional clicks may decrease, appearing in AI-generated answers keeps your brand top-of-mind and positions you as a trusted source when prospects are ready to buy.What digital marketing agencies do:Agencies that are quick to adapt can improve your business’s visibility in AI searches through a structured approach:Foundation: Focusing on traditional SEO foundations and ensuring site crawlabilityRelevance: Aligning content with customer search intent and the query patterns AI platforms recognizeTrust: Building real-world credibility and industry authority (via E-E-A-T signals, backlinks, and reviews) that AI systems recognize and trustInfluence: Creating an external footprint across reviews, directories, forums, and media that LLMs recognize and cite when generating answersThese agencies also track where and how often your brand appears in AI-generated responses, so they can adjust strategies to improve your brand’s citation frequency and visibility.3. PPC advertisingPPC advertising puts your business in front of your prospects on different channels:Search engines (through Google Ads and Microsoft Ads)Social media platforms (like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram)Display networksUnlike organic strategies that build momentum over time, PPC delivers immediate visibility by targeting users based on demographics, interests, online behavior, and buying intent.When someone searches for exactly what you offer, PPC ensures your business appears at the top of search results—precisely when prospects are ready to take action. You only pay when someone clicks your ad, making every dollar directly tied to engagement.For example, if you offer HVAC services, PPC can place your business at the top of search results when someone searches for “HVAC services near me.” You only pay when someone clicks your ad, so your budget goes toward people genuinely interested in your services.PPC’s business impact:PPC is effective for capturing high-intent buyers actively searching for solutions. In fact, paid ad visitors are 50% more likely to buy than organic visitors, meaning prospects who are ready to buy are clicking ads, not just browsing.If you need immediate leads or sales, PPC can deliver results within days, not months. You’re also in control — you can increase spend on campaigns that perform, adjust ones that don’t, or immediately pause what’s not working and reallocate your budget.What digital marketing agencies do:After analyzing your market and current performance, agencies typically structure PPC campaigns around:Audience targeting: Identifying high-value customer segments based on search behavior, demographics, and buying signalsCampaign architecture: Building ad groups and keyword strategies that match customer intent at different stages of the buying journeyCreative testing: Developing and testing ad copy, visuals, and landing page combinations to maximize conversion ratesBudget optimization: Allocating spend strategically across platforms and campaigns to maximize ROICampaign monitoring and reporting: Tracking performance metrics (cost per click, conversion rates, customer acquisition cost) and adjusting bidding, ad creative, and targeting to improve results and lower costs over time4. Content marketingContent marketing is the strategic creation and distribution of valuable content that educates your audience, answers their questions, and builds trust in your business. Content types include the following:Blog postsVideosGuidesCase studiesOriginal research or surveyInfographicsWhen prospects are researching solutions, your content guides them through their decision-making process, helping them understand their options and recognize your business as a partner. Over time, your published content will establish your business as an authority in your field, support your SEO efforts, and nurture your prospects throughout their customer journey.Content marketing’s business impact:Content marketing delivers compounding returns over time. The key advantage is longevity — evergreen content continues attracting organic traffic, generating leads, and building authority long after it’s published.For example, a single comprehensive guide can drive qualified traffic for years, generating leads month after month without additional investment. This long-term asset approach directly impacts your bottom line by reducing customer acquisition costs and building sustainable revenue streams.What digital marketing agencies do:Based on your customers’ pain points and information needs, agencies typically build content strategies around:Content planning: Identifying topics that address customer pain points at each stage of the buyer journey (awareness, consideration, and decision)SEO integration: Creating content optimized for search engines to drive organic traffic while naturally incorporating target keywordsContent creation: Producing blog posts, guides, videos, case studies, and resources that establish your expertiseDistribution strategy: Promoting content through email, social media, and other channels to maximize reach and engagementPerformance tracking: Monitoring organic traffic, lead generation, and conversion metrics to understand what content drives business results and refine the strategy accordingly5. Social media marketingSocial media marketing is the strategic use of social platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to build brand awareness, engage with your audience, and drive business growth.Social media gives you direct access to where your customers spend their time. You can build community, share your expertise, and stay top-of-mind through consistent engagement.The platforms depend on your audience. B2B businesses often prioritize LinkedIn to reach decision-makers, while consumer brands typically focus on Instagram and Facebook for visual storytelling and community building.Social media marketing’s business impact:Social media creates multiple touchpoints throughout the customer journey — from initial brand discovery to ongoing relationship building. Social media strategies focus on both community engagement and business outcomes.For example, a professional services firm might use social platforms to answer common client questions publicly, demonstrating expertise that engages both their existing clients and prospects. This engagement directly impacts your bottom line by attracting and possibly acquiring new customers while nurturing relationships with current customers, increasing their lifetime value.What digital marketing agencies do:Agencies typically help you build social media strategies around:Platform selection: Choosing the right channels based on where your audience is activeContent strategy: Creating educational, promotional, and engaging content aligned with your brandCommunity management: Developing brand voice playbooks and managing ongoing engagement with prospects and customers on social mediaPaid social advertising: Running targeted campaigns to reach new audiencesPerformance tracking and reporting: Monitoring metrics, reporting results, and refining what works6. Email marketingEmail marketing is the strategic use of email to nurture leads, engage customers, and drive conversions through targeted messaging.This digital marketing strategy goes beyond newsletters, with different email types serving specific purposes in the customer journey:Automated welcome and thank-you sequencesPromotional campaignsAbandoned cart emailsInformational newslettersEmail marketing’s business impact:Email marketing delivers ROI. For every dollar spent, businesses see an average return of $36 to $40.For example, an e-commerce business might use automated emails to recover abandoned shopping carts. A B2B company might send educational emails over several months to stay in touch with prospects until they’re ready to buy.Email drives revenue by bringing customers back for repeat purchases, recovering lost sales, and keeping your business top-of-mind with prospects throughout their decision-making process.What digital marketing agencies do:Agencies typically help with the following:List building and segmentation: Growing your subscriber base and organizing contacts by behavior, interests, and buying stageAutomation and drip campaigns: Creating automated email sequences that nurture leads based on triggers and actionsPersonalization: Tailoring content, subject lines, and offers to individual subscriber preferences and behaviorsCampaign creation: Designing and writing emails that drive opens, clicks, and conversionsPerformance tracking and reporting: Monitoring open rates, click-through rates, and revenue attribution to optimize campaignsFor example, agencies work with you to understand your customer behavior, segment your customer list, and set up automated emails for different scenariosWelcome emails for new customersCart abandonment sequencesRe-engagement campaignsAgencies also track and measure your email marketing campaigns’ performance, so they can refine your strategy to maximize revenue.7. Conversion rate optimization (CRO)CRO is the process of improving your website and landing pages to turn more visitors into leads, subscribers, or customers.CRO focuses on getting better results from your site traffic. Instead of spending more to drive more additional visitors, you’re optimizing your existing website to work harder for you by making it easy for site visitors to convert.CRO’s business impact:CRO maximizes the value of every visitor. For example, even small improvements in conversion rates can increase revenue without spending more on advertising.These improvements compound over time across all channels. Traffic coming from organic search converts better and your paid ad campaigns deliver improved returns.What digital marketing agencies do:A good agency will work with you on a comprehensive CRO approach, which includes the following:Conversion analysis: To identify where visitors drop off and what prevents them from taking your desired actionA/B testing: To test different copies, layouts, calls-to-action, and page elements to check what drives better resultsUser experience improvements: To simplify navigation and forms, and remove friction from the conversion processLanding page optimization: To create and refine dedicated campaign pages that focus on a conversion goalPerformance tracking and reporting: To measure CRO results and its impact on your revenue, so it can prioritize high-value improvements8. Website design and developmentWeb design and development is the process of creating and updating your website so it looks professional, works smoothly, and attracts visitors to become customers.Your website is often the first impression potential customers have of your business. In fact, half of consumers say their impression of a business depends on its website design, making your site a critical avenue to improve your company’s credibility.Website design and development’s impact:An effective website directly influences whether visitors become customers. With a professional-looking website, you build trust among your audience.Pair it with clear navigation and fast load times, and you have a website that entices visitors to engage with your business.What web design and development agencies do:Good agencies providing website design and development services will ensure that your site is intuitive for your users. Their approach will likely include:User experience (UX) design: To make your website easy to navigate, use, and interact withResponsive design: To make your website work properly on desktops, tablets, and mobile devicesPerformance optimization: To improve site speed and technical performance to improve rankings and reduce bounce rates9. Marketing analytics and reportingGood digital marketing agencies don’t just run campaigns and call it a day. They monitor results, identify what’s working and what’s not, and continuously optimize your campaigns.With marketing analytics and reporting, agencies can better understand which efforts are driving results and where to invest their budget.Business impact of marketing analytics and reporting:Clear reporting turns marketing into a measurable investment. When you see which channels drive revenue and qualified leads, you make smarter budget decisions.For example, analytics might show that visitors who read case studies before requesting a demo are three times more likely to become customers. The agency would use that insight to make case studies more prominent and include them in nurture sequences.What digital marketing agencies do:Goal and KPI setup: Defining success metrics aligned with your revenue goalsPerformance dashboards: Creating visual reports using tools like Google Analytics, or building custom dashboards for your needsRevenue attribution: Understanding which marketing efforts contribute to salesRegular reporting: Providing consistent performance updates and recommendationsData-driven optimization: Using insights to adjust strategy and budget allocationWhy do businesses hire a digital marketing agency?Businesses turn to digital marketing agencies at different stages of growth and for various reasons. Here are the most common scenarios:When internal resources are stretched thinYour team is juggling too many responsibilities, and marketing tasks are falling through the cracks. An agency fills this gap by handling campaigns, content, and analytics so your team can focus on core business operations.When you’re not seeing results from current effortsYou’ve been running marketing campaigns, but you don’t see results:Site visitors aren’t convertingAd spend isn’t delivering ROIOrganic visibility has plateauedAgencies bring specialized expertise to diagnose issues and implement strategies that drive measurable results.When you’re ready to scaleYour business is growing, and you need marketing that can keep pace. Hiring a digital marketing agency as a partner makes sense when you’re:Entering new marketsLaunching new productsExpanding your customer baseWhen you lack specific expertiseDigital marketing is always evolving — from SEO algorithm updates and AI search optimization to new advertising platforms. Instead of trying to become an expert in everything, businesses hire agencies to get access to specialists who know the latest industry changes and best practices.When you need faster executionWhile you can DIY SEO and create a website with AI-powered site builders, there will be times when businesses need to run time-sensitive campaigns or respond to market opportunities. Agencies have established processes and dedicated teams to immediately execute campaigns without sacrificing quality.This story was produced by WebFX and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Davenport Mayor Jason Gordon to give his first State of the City next month Newly elected Davenport Mayor Jason Gordon will give his first State of the City speech June 11.
	Davenport hosting State of the City address June 11 Davenport Mayor Jason Gordon will deliver his first State of the City address on Thursday, June 11during a breakfast event at the Putnam Museum and Science Center, 1717 W. 12th Street. Mayor Gordon will share his vision for the city and key initiatives while highlighting the past year’s accomplishments. Doors open at 8 a.m. and [...]
	Work on rail crossing in Milan to begin Work on the rail crossing at Big Island Road will begin on May 11, the Illinois Department of Transportation said.
	7 signs your child needs occupational therapy 7 signs your child needs occupational therapyAll children develop at different rates, and no two children are alike—even among siblings and children who grow up in the same environment.If your child is delayed in reaching their physical milestones or if they look like they may be struggling with physical movement in general, seeking expert help from a pediatric occupational therapist is something to consider.If you’re at a point in parenting where you’re wondering if your child may benefit from pediatric occupational therapy (also known as pediatric OT), knowing how to recognize the signs a child may need pediatric OT is the first step toward getting them the professional assistance they need to develop and thrive.In this guide, Village breaks down:What pediatric occupational therapy (OT) for kids is.How pediatric occupational therapy can help children.The 7 signs your child may need pediatric occupational therapy.How long a child may need pediatric occupational therapy.How to get started with pediatric OT.What is occupational therapy for kids?“Occupational therapy for kids really focuses on helping kids participate in their everyday, daily activities,” says Lindsey Wood, MOT, OTR/L, and founder and CEO of Eat. Play. Love. Occupational Therapy Inc.For kids, these everyday activities include things like:PlayingLearningRegulating their minds, bodies, and emotionsLearning or gaining independence with self-careInteracting with othersWhen it comes to defining pediatric occupational therapy, it helps to remember that an occupation is anything that occupies your time, and so when it comes to kids, Wood says it’s “essentially their job to play, learn, interact socially, and regulate.”After an evaluation session with your child, their pediatric occupational therapist will create a customized care plan that includes the short-term and long-term goals for your child. They will track progress over time and see if your child is moving toward or meeting their individualized goals.When children go to pediatric OT sessions, it may look a lot like playing games, going through obstacle courses, pretend play, and fun movement. In reality, their therapist has created an enriching environment filled with child-centered activities that are helping them learn valuable skills like physical movement, self-regulation, and self-care. “Everything we do in therapy is very intentional at addressing the underlying skills that we’re supporting,” Wood says.How can occupational therapy help children?The goals for your child will be outlined in the care plan their therapist creates for them. Your child may go to OT for one specific reason or with one goal in mind, but they’ll learn other valuable skills along the way as well.Pediatric occupational therapy can help children:Learn the physical skills they need to work toward or meet physical milestones.Boost their gross motor skills and fine motor skills.Support their sensory systems.Work on their emotional regulation.Build their self-care skills.Improve their relationships with others.Pediatric OT is tailored to each child’s needs, so your child’s therapist will meet them where they’re at and change and adapt their activities on the fly as needed, Wood says.Why would a child need occupational therapy?If you’ve been thinking about whether your child could benefit from pediatric OT, there are a few things to look out for that could signal they could use the additional support of a therapist. Here, Bindi Gudhka, MA, OTR/L, SWC, and founder of Play Connections, shares the seven signs your child may need occupational therapy.1. Your child experiences sensory processing challenges.When it comes to sensory processing challenges, these children may be constantly moving, climbing on furniture, not following directions, or have a hard time transitioning from one activity to another, Gudhka says.Oftentimes, these sensory processing challenges are discovered once a child starts school or daycare, and their teachers notice. There’s a lot of stimuli in a school environment, as well as more tactile, hands-on experiences like going outside to the playground, playing in a sandbox or sensory bin, painting with fingers or hands, and doing crafting activities—all of which may bring sensory processing issues to the surface.2. Your child has attention or cognitive awareness issues.Similar to the sensory processing challenges, school or daycare may be the first place you discover your child may have attention or cognitive awareness issues. In this case, Gudhka says their teacher may notice that they’re not able to sit during circle time like other kids, or they may not be able to follow along with someone reading a book or singing a song during class.3. Your child is having difficulty with their social participation or play skills.Social participation in young children is often centered around play, so recognizing when their play skills may need some additional support could be another sign.Gudhka says some behaviors that could benefit from OT may include:A child who doesn’t play and who instead moves around a room from place to place with no engagement.A child who doesn’t interact with toys and instead only grabs or throws them.A child who doesn’t know how to play in a meaningful, engaged way.There are different developmental stages of play, so things can progress and develop over time. Your child’s teachers are a great resource if you have any questions or concerns around their play skills.4. Your child has delays in fine motor and/or gross motor skills.Pediatric occupational therapy can help children develop and improve their fine and gross motor skills.Fine motor skills are the movements that use the smaller muscles in the body, like the hands and fingers. According to the Cleveland Clinic, fine motor skills can include things like:Handwriting, coloring, or drawingCutting with scissorsButtoning a buttonTying shoesHolding and using utensilsIf your child struggles with fine motor skills, they may avoid or struggle with activities like arts and crafts (such as coloring a picture or cutting out a shape with scissors), writing with a pencil, or getting dressed by themself (such as asking someone to button their shirt or tie their shoes for them).Gross motor skills are the movements that use the large (gross) muscles in the body or the entire body, like the core, arms, and legs. According to the Cleveland Clinic, gross motor skills can include things like:WalkingRunningJumpingStandingSitting upIf your child struggles with gross motor skills, they may appear clumsy or show issues with balance, and they may avoid certain playtime activities like riding a tricycle or playing on a play structure.5. Your child shows major emotional dysregulation on a frequent, daily basis.Emotional dysregulation can show up in children in different ways, and it may leave you feeling like you’re walking on eggshells all the time. Tantrums are the most obvious sign of emotional dysregulation, especially when tantrums happen frequently, it takes a long time to calm your child down, or tantrums lead to aggressive behavior (like biting, hitting, pushing, or kicking), Gudhka says.“The minute parents start realizing that, wait, this feels harder than it should be, I think that's a sign because it shouldn't be that hard,” Gudhka says. “There might be an underlying reason why it feels that challenging.”6. Your child struggles with self-care skills appropriate to their age.Self-care skills like getting dressed are an important part of a child’s day-to-day life, and if they’re struggling with these types of skills, it can lead to tantrums and frustration.For example, Gudhka says that by at least 3 years old, a child should be able to do some simple self-care skills, such as taking off their clothes by themself and pulling their own pants up. If your child is struggling with a morning or evening routine and the self-care skills involved, pediatric OT could help them build their skills.7. Your child has a certain condition or genetic syndrome that may benefit from occupational therapy.According to the Cleveland Clinic, some conditions that benefit from pediatric OT include:Sensory processing disorder (SPD)Autism spectrum disorder (ASD)Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)Down syndromeCerebral palsyDevelopmental delaysGudhka adds that other children who may need pediatric OT include:Babies who were born prematurely or who spent time in the NICU.Babies who experienced birth trauma.Children who had a G tube or an oral-nasal tube.Occupational therapy is one important piece in the treatment plans for children living with these conditions or genetic syndromes.How long does a child need occupational therapy?All children progress at their own individualized rate, so how long a child needs pediatric OT will depend on the skills they’re working on, the goals they’re aiming for, and on your child and their progression. The specific skills and goals for your child will be outlined in the personalized care plan their pediatric occupational therapist creates for them. Your child’s therapist will walk you through the care plan for your child and what kinds of goals they have set based on their evaluation.How to get started with pediatric occupational therapyPediatric occupational therapy can help children improve their physical, emotional, social, and self-care skills, making things easier for them and you as they learn valuable everyday skills.This story was produced by Village and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	How does jewelry insurance work? How does jewelry insurance work?At a high level, jewelry insurance is simply a contract between you and an insurance provider. What that means is you purchase a policy so that if something happens—such as a ring that is damaged, lost, stolen or simply disappears—the insurance provider is obligated to repair that item or replace it. To buy a jewelry insurance policy and be able to make a claim, you typically need to provide a detailed sales receipt or an appraisal of the insured item’s value. Some insurance providers will also ask for a diamond report such as a GIA certificate, a certified description from the Gemological Institute of America.In this article, BriteCo explains everything you need to know about how jewelry insurance works.Who should get jewelry insurance?If you’ve purchased a fine piece of jewelry or an engagement ring or a watch, typically you would be advised to get insurance. A good rule of thumb is to insure any jewelry piece worth more than $1000. When buying a policy, you’ll want to consider the cost as well as other factors, such as whether you want to pay a deductible amount out of your own pocket if a claim is made.How to Insure JewelryStep 1 — Understand the benefits of specialized jewelry insurance.Specialized jewelry insurance providers understand the jewelry industry. Jewelry insurance covers the real risks from loss, theft, damage and “mysterious disappearance,” providing an equivalent replacement for a lost or stolen item should you make a claim. Most will also work with your local jeweler to make sure you get the quality replacement you deserve.Step 2 — Compare policy prices.Most jewelry insurance policies cost from 1% to 3% of the appraised value of an individual item. It is important to compare costs, since many insurers have not updated their pricing in decades to reflect gains in efficiencies with newer technology.Step 3 — As a regulated industry, jewelry insurance providers have applications that typically require you to answer a few questions.Once you receive a customized quote, you proceed by answering a few more questions online to make sure you get all the discounts you’re entitled to, or to add an insured person at no extra cost. You then receive a final price and choose how you want to pay (monthly or with a discounted annual payment). That’s it. You can be insured in about two minutes.Step 4 — Get your policy online and upload documents.Jewelry insurers almost always require documentation of your item’s value in case you make a claim.Depending on the insurer, you may need to upload an appraisal, detailed sales receipt or a lab certificate for the insured item along with a current photo of the piece. You’ll get your policy via email, usually within 24 hours.How much does ring insurance cost?Since it’s an infrequent purchase, most people have no idea what jewelry insurance should cost. Some think it’s probably too expensive and others don’t know how or where to get a policy. In practice, jewelry insurance costs anywhere from 0.5% of the total value of an item up to 3%. Shop around for the best price and coverage.What does jewelry insurance cover?You want to make sure your insurance policy covers loss, theft, damage and what is known as “mysterious disappearance.” Mysterious disappearance is really important, because not all insurance companies cover it, even though it’s the most frequent reason cited for a lost or missing jewelry piece.What is a deductible for jewelry insurance?For jewelry insurance, a deductible specifies a certain amount of agreed upon money that you will pay when you make a claim for repair or replacement. If your policy has a $500 deductible for jewelry insurance and your total cost of replacement is $4,000, for example, you will pay $500 out of your own pocket.Why would I choose a deductible?A deductible helps reduce your annual premium cost of a jewelry insurance policy. But in exchange for reducing your cost, you will have to pay the deductible amount out of your own pocket when making a claim. Most customers today do not want to pay deductibles because it can be a hassle. And the amount of money you might save on your premium is not enough, generally, to justify paying out of pocket. Deductibles are useful if premiums are high—such as homeowners coverage in a high risk or coastal area. But jewelry insurance is a relatively small insurance expense compared to other insurance and deductibles should not be necessary.Does ring insurance cover a lost diamond?Generally, the answer is yes. Consult your policy and look at your coverage to be sure but a jewelry insurance policy should cover a lost diamond or a damaged diamond in your ring.If I upgrade my ring in a few years after getting a policy, can I update my insurance?The answer is definitely yes. You will want to contact your insurance provider periodically and provide them with updated documentation such as a reappraisal. Some jewelry insurance providers require a reappraisal every three to five years, others automatically update jewelry coverage values to reflect market changes to help ensure you always have the appropriate amount of insurance.Do I need to mail my ring to a company to get insurance?You shouldn’t have to mail your item to a company to get insurance, though some may require it. BriteCo How often should I get my ring appraised?Most insurance companies will ask you to get your item reappraised every couple of years. Others automatically adjust the replacement value for you, so you never have to worry about getting an item reappraised.How long does a jewelry insurance claim take to get processed?Every situation is different, but you should get a repair or replacement within two to three weeks. A lot depends on the jeweler you are working with on your repair or replacement. Does the jeweler need to custom design a new item, or create a CAD rendering that requires your approval?Who usually pays for engagement ring insurance?Traditionally, whomever purchases the ring or jewelry item also buys the insurance. But both the ring giver or the ring receiver can purchase insurance for it. It doesn’t really matter since spending 0.5% or 1% of its total value to insure it is worthwhile for the peace of mind it brings.Can I insure my necklace?That depends on the insurance provider. If the value of your necklace or pendant is typically over $1,000, it is recommended to get insurance for that item, especially a policy with no deductibles.When is the best time to get jewelry insurance?The best time to buy jewelry insurance is as soon as possible after you purchase an item. Even if the policy documents haven’t been issued yet, but you’ve paid for the policy, you should be completely covered. Buy the insurance as soon as you can just so there is no gap in coverage.What does jewelry insurance include?The key types of coverage that you’ll want for your jewelry insurance include replacement for theft, loss, damage and mysterious disappearance. Theft is exactly what it sounds like—–somebody stole your item or you put your ring in your purse and somebody stole the purse. Damage coverage is critical. It’s common that somebody knocks an engagement ring on a door handle or drops it on the floor and the diamond pops out. Or the shank of the ring cracks, or the center stone gets chipped. And, mysterious disappearance is a must for coverage since there are situations where the loss of an item has no clear explanation.What is mysterious disappearance?Mysterious disappearance describes the loss of a jewelry item that has simply disappeared. You don’t really know what happened, but your ring is gone.For example, you are going to the grocery store or running an errand with your ring on your finger when you suddenly notice it’s not there. You might look in your car, or in the parking lot but it’s nowhere to be found. So mysterious disappearance is different from losing your ring swimming in the ocean or dropping it down the public restroom drain, where there’s an immediate reason.Do you need an appraisal to get your jewelry insured?Most reputable jewelry insurance companies will ask for some level of paperwork or documentation that certifies the value of your item. That usually means providing an appraisal from a jeweler though some companies may accept a detailed sales receipt. Making sure you have an accurate appraisal is really the only way to guarantee that your item will be replaced exactly in case of a claim. You’ll also want appraisal information for your own records should you ever want to sell or trade an item. Any reputable jeweler should be happy to provide you with an appraisal, especially with a new purchase from their store.Can I work with my own jeweler to replace my lost jewelry?Be aware that some jewelry insurance companies require you and your jeweler to use a “preferred network” for obtaining a replacement stone, diamond, or any piece of jewelry when filing an insurance claim for lost jewelry. They push you to the preferred network because the insurance company gets preferred pricing from a set of vendors that helps reduce their costs but it may not represent the true value of your jewelry. This can be a hassle if you or your jeweler feels the quality of the preferred network stone doesn’t match the original.Other insurers allow you to work with the jeweler you choose to make sure you get a replacement piece that you are happy with. That includes working with your local or family jeweler or an online jeweler, so you are not forced to use a preferred network.Does Homeowners Insurance Cover an Engagement Ring?If you rely on your homeowners insurance to cover personal property or a piece of jewelry, you may not have full coverage for loss or damage to a ring or necklace. Homeowners insurers typically cap coverage at $1,000 up to $2,000, along with a deductible. If you file a claim for a lost $5,000 engagement ring, expect to pay between $3,000 to $4,000 out of your own pocket to replace it. What is the cost of jewelry insurance? Rates vary depending on where you live, but typically people will pay 1%-3% of the value of your jewelry for jewelry insurance.File a claim for a lost or damaged piece of jewelry, and you may risk a future increase in your homeowners insurance premium; in some cases, that claim can contribute to a policy cancellation. While some people can add a floater for separate coverage on their existing homeowners or renters policy, these riders are typically subject to deductibles and can be more expensive than specialty jewelry insurers. If you have valuable jewelry, it’s important to insure it separately to be sure it’s fully covered in the event of loss or damage.This story was produced by BriteCo and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
	Learn about history at Bishop Hill's Civil War Days The Bishop Hill Heritage Association is marking the nation’s 250th birthday by hosting activities that show aspects of early U.S. history, including the 2026 Bishop Hill Civil War Day on Saturday, May 16. There will be Union and Confederate encampments in the village park and programs taking place throughout the day. The civilian encampment and [...]
	Federal courts clash over state law displacing Orleans clerk of court Calvin Duncan is sworn in as Clerk of Criminal Court at Orleans Parish Criminal District Court on April 21, 2026. (Photo by Christiana Botic/Verite News and Catchlight Local/Report for America)Just hours after a federal judge halted a new state law to eliminate the Orleans Parish clerk of criminal court’s office, an appellate court will allow the measure to take effect. Caught in the court chaos is Calvin Duncan, who officially began work Monday. The former “jailhouse lawyer” who was wrongfully imprisoned for 28 years, was elected court clerk in November with 68% support against incumbent Darren Lombard. Duncan showed up for work Monday morning at the Orleans Criminal District Courthouse, the Associated Press reported. But for the time being, an administrative stay from the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals leaves him without a job. Duncan, a Black Democrat, sued Republican Gov. Jeff Landry after he signed a law Thursday to eliminate the clerk’s post, effective overnight Sunday. In his place, Orleans Civil Court Clerk Chelsea Napoleon Richard would take over criminal court responsibilities. Orleans is the only jurisdiction in the state with two separate courts. State lawmakers have also advanced a separate proposal to reduce the number of judges in Orleans. U.S. District Judge John deGravelles issued a temporary restraining order Sunday to stop the law from eliminating the clerk’s role. He wrote that the new state law “violated [Duncan’s] federally protected constitutional rights to due process and to vote.” In a social media post Monday morning, the governor said the order from deGravelles, a federal court appointee of former President Barack Obama, “accomplishes nothing of substance.” After the 5th Circuit’s stay was issued, Landry said in a separate post the judge only managed to “create chaos and confusion.” New Orleans officials held a swearing-in ceremony April 21 for Duncan as legislation to eliminate his job advanced at the State Capitol. May 4 marks his first official day in office. The ACLU of Louisiana is among the organizations and lawyers representing Duncan in the case. “The Louisiana Legislature attempted something this country has seen before: the targeted dismantling of Black political power through the machinery of law. The court saw it for what it was.” Alanah Odoms, ACLU of Louisiana executive director, said in a statement. Duncan’s attorneys have vowed to continue their fight. This is a developing story. Courtesy of Louisiana Illuminator
	For Black Louisiana, justice is not colorblind — just blind, period Protesters hold a coffin for "Democracy" as they march down Tulane Avenue in New Orleans on Monday, May, 4, 2026, in opposition to Gov. Jeff Landry's order to suspend U.S. House elections in Louisiana and eliminate the clerk of criminal court's position. (Photo by Greg LaRose/Louisiana Illuminator) In 1773, a group of Boston colonists dressed as Mohawks dumped 342 chests of British tea into the harbor. They were not protesting the tax itself so much as the principle behind it: to be taxed by Parliament where they had no real representation was, in their telling, a form of political bondage they described without irony as slavery. They wrote a declaration about that principle three years later. They went to war over it. They built a republic on the proposition that a free people cannot be governed without their consent. On April 29, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court of that same republic ruled in Louisiana v. Callais that the congressional districts Louisiana drew to give Black voters a meaningful opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice was unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. In a 6-3 decision authored by Justice Samuel Alito, the court struck down the state’s second majority-Black congressional district and, in the process, hollowed out the core remedial promise of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act: to insist on the very principle the founders fought a war over is, when Black people insist on it, treated as a constitutional offense. Read that twice. Then read it once more. Black Louisianans are roughly one-third of this state’s population, yet the Supreme Court has made clear that even a district designed to reflect that reality is suspect if Black political representation is too visible. Black families in Louisiana have helped build the roads, levees, courthouses, ports, schools and public institutions that make this state function. They have paid the tax of citizenship in cash and in blood for generations. And now the Supreme Court tells us that the principle which built this country does not fully extend to us. The same court that has spent years insisting it is color-blind has decided that when Black voters seek representation rooted in our communities, our geography and our lived experience, the constitutional violation is ours. The remedy becomes the harm. The franchise becomes the gerrymander. The wronged party, somehow, is the structure of inequality itself. Justice Elena Kagan, dissenting, called the ruling what it is: a decision that renders Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act “all but a dead letter.” The doctrinal framework that has anchored federal vote-dilution enforcement since Thornburg v. Gingles in 1986 has not been formally overruled, but it has been weakened from the inside. The statute still sits on the page. Much of the remedy is gone. What this means in Louisiana is immediate. The 6th Congressional District that elected Cleo Fields in 2024 — a 250-mile arc from Shreveport through Alexandria and Lafayette into north Baton Rouge — is gone. Gov. Jeff Landry declared an emergency Thursday and suspended Louisiana’s May 16 congressional primary to give lawmakers time to redraw the state’s congressional districts. Mail and overseas ballots had already gone out, and early in-person voting was about to begin. Voters who had already cast ballots were told their votes in the congressional races would not count. Multiple lawsuits were filed in state and federal court within roughly 36 hours challenging the suspension. What this means regionally is even larger. NPR’s reporting identified at least 15 majority-Black or near-majority-Black congressional districts, from Louisiana through the Carolinas, that are now vulnerable under the logic of Callais. Advocacy groups have projected that as many as one in three seats in the Congressional Black Caucus could be placed in jeopardy in a single redistricting cycle if the most aggressive redraw scenarios materialize. NPR also noted that the post-Civil War record drop in Black U.S. House representation was four seats at the end of Reconstruction. Callais could approach or exceed that mark. What this means morally is what every Black Louisianan already knows. Justice in this country is not colorblind. It is blind, period. Blind to the lived weight of being Black in this state. Blind to the patterned harm its rulings keep producing. Blind to its own foundational hypocrisy. Black folk in this country have been given empty promises since slavery, through sharecropping, through tenant farming, through every century when this state’s economy ran on Black backs and this state’s law ran around Black bodies. Black Americans have shed blood on battlefields from the Revolutionary War era forward while still being forced to fight, at home, for the most basic democratic recognition. We have done the work. And the questions being asked in 2026 are the same questions colonists asked in 1773: Have we not contributed to this country enough? Have we not shed enough blood? Were our ancestors not enslaved enough? What will it take for us to be seen, to be heard, to be respected? The Supreme Court has given its answer. Not yet. Perhaps never. But the court is not the country. The country is the people, and the people of Louisiana — Black, white, Brown, Native, and newcomer alike — have a choice to make in the weeks ahead about which American era they want to live in: the 1776 of the founders, who called blind representation tyranny; 1898, when leaders of Louisiana’s constitutional convention openly sought to “perpetuate the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon race in Louisiana”; or the 2026 of Justice Samuel Alito, who has somehow reconciled the two. The Voting Rights Act of 1965, considered the crown jewel of the Civil Rights Movement, has been pried loose. The pattern is visible. And Black Louisiana — taxed, bled and built into the foundation of this state — is not going anywhere. Courtesy of Louisiana Illuminator
	Supreme Court gives abortion pill mifepristone a 1-week reprieve from a major change The Supreme Court says rules that allow patients to get the abortion pill mifepristone through the mail can stay the same for at least a week.
	The UAE says Iran resumes attacks as the U.S. moves to reopen the Strait of Hormuz The U.S. military said it helped two merchant ships transit the Strait of Hormuz, and the United Arab Emirates said it was fending off Iranian missiles and drones.
	Davenport mayor to deliver state of the city address The event is open to the public but registration is required.

Tuesday, May 5th, 2026

Monday, May 4th, 2026