Highway 89 has been closed due to flooding and road wash out between Cameron and Highway 160 southwest of Tuba City. Grand Canyon National Park remains open to the public. However, detours are in place, extending travel times to the park. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/hwy-89-closure-affects-travel-to-n-and-s-rim-of-grand-canyon-nat-pk.htm

Grand Canyon National Park has temporarily instituted closures for the portion of the Ikes Fire Planning Area that is within Grand Canyon National Park. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/grand-canyon-national-park-implements-temporary-road-and-trail-closures-on-the-north-rim.htm

The Kaibab National Forest instituted a Temporary Area Closure for all National Forests System lands and roads within the Ikes Fire Planning Area. This Order will be in effect beginning at 8:00 AM on August 8, 2019, and shall remain in effect until September 27, 2019, or until rescinded, whichever comes first. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/kaibab-national-forest-temporary-area-closure-for-ikes-fire-20190808.htm

The Ikes Fire, which has been managed by a Local Type 3 Incident Management Team (IMT), transitioned to a local Type 4 Incident Commander effective this morning, Sunday, August 25, 2019. This will be the Final Ikes Fire News Release unless significant fire activity occurs. North Rim Closures: Powell Plateau Trail, The North Bass Trail, Fire Point, Swamp Point, and the W4 road north of the intersection of the W4 and W1 Roads. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/ikes-fire-command-transitions-to-type-4-team-closures-remain-20190825.htm

The National Park Service (NPS) received a letter today from the Health and Human Services Director and Chief Health Officer for Coconino County recommending the full closure of Grand Canyon National Park. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/grand-canyon-national-park-closed-04-01-2020.htm

Rather than opting for the costly and complex process of using stem cells to cure age-related macular degeneration, scientists used skin cells.

The post Irreversible No Longer: Blind Mice See Again Thanks To New Method of Synthesizing Lost Cells appeared first on Good News Network.

The Chugach and Tongass National Forests are changing, possibly in response to global warming.

Using just CSS to produce a click action multi-level menu with persist.

An update to the previous version of the click action multi-level menu with persist.

A click action dropline menu with persist and accessibility.

A vertical concertina menu with a click to open and close action and animation.

Using just CSS to produce a multi-level menu with a click to open/close action instead of the normal hover suitable for the iPad.

Over the past 7 years, a strong collaboration has emerged between the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest ecosystem research group and the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word, an independently funded program for nature writing based in the Department of Philosophy, Oregon State University. The program is called Long-Term Ecological Reflections and it brings together scientists, creative writers, and environmental philosophers to consider new ways to conceptualize and communicate views of long-term ecological change in forests and watersheds and the participation of humans in that change. The program is designed to parallel the Long-Term Ecological Research program, a national science program initiated in 1980 and involving the Andrews Forest. Both programs focus on primary inquiry and have 200-year planning horizons, which have resulted in some uniquely farsighted perspectives and astute ecological observations.

It has not yet been confirmed when the fast-food branch will open

Privately owned forests provide many public benefits, including clean water and air, wildlife habitat, and recreational opportunities. By 2030, 44.2 million acres of rural private forest land across the conterminous United States are projected to experience substantial increases in residential development. As housing density increases, the public benefits provided by private forests can be permanently altered. We examine factors behind projected patterns of residential development and conversion of private forest land by 2030 in northwestern Washington, southern Maine, and northwestern Georgia. Some key factors affecting the extent of future residential housing include (1) population growth from migration into an area; (2) historical settlement patterns, topography, and land ownership; and (3) land use planning and zoning.

Scientists have had little information about how prescribed fire and cattle grazing—common practices in many Western ponderosa pine forests—affect plant abundance and reproduction in the forest understory. Pacific Northwest Research Station scientists began to explore how these practices affect vegetation in a five-year study of postfire vegetation in eastern Oregon ponderosa pine forests where cattle have been routinely pastured from late June or early July through early to mid August. For this area of eastern Oregon, they found that excluding cattle grazing during peak growing season increased native plant cover and grass flowering capability in ungrazed areas compared to grazed areas. Because vegetation was measured prior to releasing cattle on the land, the study's results tend to reflect lasting grazing impacts rather than simple consumption.

This guidebook describes major biological and physical attributes of the 155-ha (384-ac) Lost Lake Research Natural Area (RNA), in Jackson County, Oregon. The RNA has been designated because it contains examples of a landslide-dammed lake; and a low-elevation lake with aquatic beds and fringing marsh, surrounded by mixed-conifer forest (ONHAC 2010).

Rangeland exclosures installed primarily in the 1960s, but with some from the 1940s, were resampled for changes in plant community structure and composition periodically from 1977 to 2004 on the Malheur, Umatilla, and Wallowa-Whitman National Forests in northeastern Oregon. They allow one to compare vegetation with all-ungulate exclusion (known historically as game exclosures), all-livestock exclusion (known historically as stock exclosures), and with no exclusion (known as open areas). Thirteen upland rangeland exclosures in northeastern Oregon were selected and are presented with plant community trend data and possible causes of changes over time. Key findings are that moderate grazing by native ungulates afforded by the livestock exclosures generally stimulated bunchgrasses to retain dominance and vitality; native bunchgrasses can replace invasive rhizomatous plants given a reduction in disturbance over time; shrubs increased without ungulate use in shrubland communities; and invasive annuals that established following severe disturbances to the grassland community diminished with aggressive competition from perennial bunchgrasses.

The price by which RICKI LEE and AARON ISHMAEL's LOUD MEDIA (SARATOGA RADIO LLC) is purchasing AC simulcast WNYV/WHITEHALL, NY and WVNR-A and the construction permit for W242DF/POULTNEY, … more

Ciaran wrote the book after losing his grandfather to explain to his young daughter why he was so upset

More than 150 meals being rustled up

CHILDREN’s HOSPITAL LOS ANGELES (CHLA) has announced that their WALK & PLAY L.A. event is going virtual this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with proceedings set for SATURDAY … more

KCSN-KSBR (88.5FM)/LOS ANGELES-MISSION VIEJO current pledge drive got an interesting twist this week when station fan JOE WALSH said he would match the total if the station could generate 500 … more

While sheltering-at-home in UPSTATE NEW YORK, GLASSNOTE Head Of Promotion NICK PETROPOULOS sent KCMP (89.3 THE CURRENT)/MINNEAPOLIS PD JIM MCGUINN a song of guitar riffs and an email about … more

After a long hiatus, the syndicated one-hour weekly show, LOST & FOUND hosted by LUKE CRAMPTION, is offering 13 new shows to public radio free of charge. The shows can be accessed either … more

ALL ACCESS has learned that longtime LOS ANGELES radio executive GARY PRICE passed away on TUESDAY, MAY 5th.  PRICE was the GM for SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA stations KHJ, KROQ, KDAY, and KNAC … more

American Heart Association CEO Nancy Brown issued the following statement today following the announcement by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue at a hearing of the House Appropriations Committee that USDA would take steps to give states more...

DALLAS, 1 de abril del 2020 — Algunos cardiólogos de Wuhan, China y otros países recomiendan a los pacientes con hipertensión arterial que continúen tomando sus medicamentos, aunque los efectos de algunos se hayan visto afectados por las infecciones ...

WASHINGTON, D.C., 1 de abril del 2020 – Después de años de demoras perjudiciales por parte de la FDA, en julio del año pasado un juez federal estableció como fecha límite el 12 de mayo del 2020 para que los fabricantes de cigarrillos electrónicos...

DALLAS, 2 de abril del 2020 – La American Heart Association, la organización voluntaria líder mundial dedicada a un mundo con vidas más duraderas y saludables, anunció hoy que se otorgarán más de $14 millones en becas de investigación científica a cuatro...

Sala de prensa sobre el COVID-19 de la AHA DALLAS, 3 de abril del 2020 – El COVID-19 está generando preguntas y preocupaciones generalizadas sobre el mayor riesgo que implica para aquellos con cardiopatías y sobrevivientes de accidentes...

DALLAS, 4 de abril del 2020 — El día de ayer, se publicó una investigación en Circulation, la revista insignia de la American Heart Association, cuyo objetivo es ayudar a generar aún más conciencia sobre las manifestaciones cardiovasculares del ...

WASHINGTON, D. C., 3 de abril del 2020— Hoy, más de 200 organizaciones de protección de pacientes, médicas y de salud pública enviaron una carta a altos funcionarios de la administración de Donald Trump, en la cual se apela a la Administración para que...

Sala de prensa de la AHA sobre el COVID-19 Atención con el contenido actualizado a continuación. DALLAS, 9 de abril del 2020– Debido al aumento exponencial actual de la incidencia del COVID-19 en todo el mundo, el porcentaje de paros cardíacos con el...

Aspectos destacados de las declaraciones: Los factores sociales adversos, como el estado de los seguros, la inseguridad alimentaria, la falta de fondos para medicamentos y otros, pueden causar resultados clínicos negativos de la insuficiencia...

Research Highlights: People who had the best heart health, defined as having healthy sleep in addition to meeting the AHA Life Simple 7, were less likely to have a diagnosis of a heart disease and were less likely to develop heart disease in the ...

A special created to explore the enormously popular Chilean television series, Los 80, which tells the story of the Herrera family living their lives under the military regime. Features a video interview with Boris Quercia (of "Sexo con Amor" and "El rey de los huevones"), a text interview with screenwriter, Rodrigo Cuevas, a gallery of behind the scenes moments, and a interactive time line which shows how the Herrera family interacts with Chilean history.

Florida's foreclosure crisis seems like a never-ending nightmare. Mortgages are caught up in MERS, an electronic database that most homeowners never heard of until the foreclosure crisis. Homeowners in foreclosure are worried that robo signing by lenders' employees may have led to mortgage fraud. The mortgage process itself is under scrutiny by the courts and government regulators who are asking: How could something so simple as a home loan go so terribly wrong?

DALLAS, 3 de abril del 2020 – Debido al esfuerzo de médicos, científicos e investigadores de todo el mundo por comprender la pandemia del coronavirus (COVID-19), la American Heart Association está desarrollando un nuevo registro para agregar datos y...

Botones para compartir de AddThis Compartir en Facebook Compartir en Twitter Compartir por correo electrónico Compartir para imprimir DALLAS, 20 de abril del 2020 — Debido a que la pandemia del coronavirus (COVID-19) ha cambiado las...

  DALLAS, 23 de abril del 2020 — A medida que el distanciamiento social mantiene a las familias separadas, es posible que muchos de los que cuidan de un padre o un ser querido que padece insuficiencia cardíaca se pregunten cómo...

IOWA CITY — Once upon a time, there was a house in a city that loved literature. It was a quaint, two-story home in the heart of the historic district with brick stairs, pale yellow siding, a...

As the coronavirus spread from the nation’s meatpacking plants to the broader communities where they are located, it burned through a modest duplex in Waterloo. In the downstairs unit lived...

An Eastern Iowa furniture manufacturer will permanently close two plants, laying off about 370 employees as it drops two lines of business. Flexsteel Industries will close a factory in Dubuque with...

In response to the coronavirus, Americans were told by their federal and state governments to shut down their businesses, stop going to church, work, school or out to eat, travel only when necessary and hunker down at home. Originally, Americans were led to believe this was for a two- or three-week period, in order to flatten the curve and not overwhelm our health care system.

At seven weeks and counting, with staggering economic loss that will leave families and thousands of small businesses and farmers with profound devastation, the question must be asked, are we trying to flatten the curve or flatten our country?

The initial models that pointed to staggering loss of life from the coronavirus have proved wildly inaccurate. As of May 2, the CDC placed the number of deaths in the U.S. from the virus at 66,746. While all loss of life is deeply regrettable, these numbers cannot be considered in a vacuum. For perspective, deaths from pneumonia in the U.S. during the same period were 64,382, with average yearly deaths from influenza in the same range.

The original goal of closing much of the U.S. economy and staying at home was to flatten the curve of new coronavirus cases so that our hospital systems would not be overwhelmed. Hospitals built by the Army Corps of Engineers to handle the increased volume have mostly been taken down. Except for a few spots in the U.S. the health care system was not overwhelmed. As the medical models of casualties from the coronavirus continue to be adjusted down, it is clear the curve has been flattened, so why do we continue to stay closed and worsen the economic devastation that tunnel vision has thus far kept many of our leaders from acknowledging?

Many health experts say 80 percent of Americans will get the coronavirus and experience only mild symptoms. The curve has been flattened. Our health care system is not overwhelmed. Why is our economy, for the most part, still closed?

A University of Washington study recently revised the projected number of deaths from the coronavirus in Iowa from 1,367 to a much lower estimate of 365. While all loss of life is horrific, we must also consider the devastation being done to our economy, our families and our way of life by actions taken to combat the coronavirus.

It must be noted that 578 Iowans died from the flu and pneumonia in 2017, a greater number than are likely to pass away from the coronavirus. We also know that many who die from the virus are elderly with underlying health conditions, increasing the likelihood that any serious illness could result in their death. Are draconian government restrictions in response to the coronavirus still needed and economically sustainable? The data shows that the answers to both questions is no. We are no longer flattening the curve; we are flattening our state and nation.

We have seen the medical data. What has been less visible in news conferences and in the overall reporting of the coronavirus and our response to it, are the economic and human costs of what we are doing:

• 30 million Americans are out of work and the number grows daily.

• Dairy farmers are pouring out milk they have no market for.

• Pork producers are euthanizing hogs they have no market for.

• According to a study by Iowa State University, the losses to Iowa Agriculture are at a staggering $6.7 billion and growing, with the largest losses in pork production and ethanol.

• In Iowa, the economic loss for corn is estimated to be $788 million, $213 million for soybean and $34 million for cattle.

• The Iowa Restaurant Association estimates that between 10 & 25% of Iowa’s restaurants will not reopen.

• Iowa’s public universities are predicting a $187 million loss.

• Iowa is spending $200 million or more per month on unemployment claims, with over 171,000 Iowans unemployed.

• 29 percent of the U.S. economy is frozen as a result of government action, with U.S. economic output down 29 percent.

• U.S. unemployment could soon hit 47 million.

• Losses to U.S. tourism are predicted to top $910 billion.

• Retirement plans for millions of Americans are being decimated, with recent reports projecting the average 401(k) loss at 19 percent.

• Drug and alcohol addiction and relapse are increasing.

• Testing for chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease are being delayed, which could lead to increasing health problems and life-threatening illnesses in the future.

• Economic damage to rural hospitals could lead to hospital closures and less access to health care in some areas.

• Warnings of a possible meat shortage in the U.S. have been issued by executives of Farmland and Tyson, with reports that the food supply chain is under stress. Several grocery store chains are now limiting meat purchases and some national restaurant chains are no longer offering certain meat products on their menus. Higher meat prices are almost certain in the months to come.

• Huge U.S. debt increases unlike anything seen since World War II, to the tune of over $3 trillion and counting, are adding to the already monstrous $22 trillion in U.S. debt. This does not bode well for our children or future economic stability.

The list of consequences goes on and on, and behind each of the statistics is a family struggling to survive, a father and mother fearful of how they will care for their children, a small-business owner seeing their dreams and hard work destroyed overnight by draconian government mandates, a restaurant owner deciding never to reopen, a dairy farmer throwing in the towel and a business owner postponing indefinitely plans for expanding.

Behind these numbers is an economy greatly impacted by the government response to the coronavirus, with implications for our economic well-being profound and long lasting. Expansion projects delayed, business closures, layoffs and contraction for many businesses will likely keep unemployment numbers high and depress economic expansion for an unknown amount of time.

Let us be clear, it grows worse every day we remain closed.

Steve Holt represents District 18 in the Iowa House.

IOWA CITY — Once upon a time, there was a house in a city that loved literature.

It was a quaint, two-story home in the heart of the historic district with brick stairs, pale yellow siding, a hipped red roof and a rich history: Its original owner was Emma J. Harvat, who in 1922 became the nation’s first female mayor for a city of more than 10,000.

Nearly a century later, in 2014, Andrea Wilson was working in advertising in Florida and pined for a more “altruistic purpose” for her life. So she planned a return to Iowa, where she grew up in Columbus Junction.

But this time Wilson would live in Iowa City, known for — among other things — pioneering academic creative writing pursuits at the University of Iowa’s famed Writers’ Workshop.

Wilson wanted to write and found the idea of the historic Harvat house so charming she bought it “sight unseen” from down in Miami, aiming to run it as a bed-and-breakfast. But when she arrived, Wilson discovered a need in her new community she aimed to fill. It had a surprising dearth of literary resources for those outside the university.

“There wasn’t any place for the public to take a class or meet other writers or really be part of a writing community where people could just express their humanity through words,” she said. “It became my passion project — to try to create that for this community. I thought if anywhere should have a place like that, it would be America’s only UNESCO City of Literature at the time.”

So in March 2015, Wilson debuted Iowa City’s first community-based literary center for writers — or those aspiring. She had hoped to open a communal writing space closer to downtown but didn’t have the funding. So she gave her home a third identity: the Iowa Writers’ House.

She continued to live there and maintain her bed-and-breakfast business, which funded the writing endeavor and kept its cozy corridors bustling with interesting characters.

Famed visiting writers included Leslie Jamison, American novelist and essayist with works on the New York Times bestseller list; Hope Edelman, whose six non-fiction books have published in 17 countries and translated in 11 languages; Alison Bechdel, an American cartoonist and MacArthur fellow; and Piedad Bonnett Velez, Colombian poet, playwright and novelist of international acclaim.

And over the years, the Iowa Writers’ House connected, served and motivated thousands with its workshops, seminars, readings and summer camps. It offered editing services, founded a Bicultural Iowa Writers’ Fellowship, and — among other things — inspired a growing network of friends and creatives to value their own stories and the stories of others.

“I said yes to everything anyone ever asked of me,” Wilson said. “We gave tours. I received visiting scholars. We hosted dinners for visiting poets and writers for the university. And a lot of that was all volunteer. We never had a steady funding stream like most literary centers do.”

So when the coronavirus in March reached Iowa City, later shuttering storefronts, canceling events, curtailing travel plans and crippling the economy, the Iowa Writers’ House momentum stopped, too.

“Once COVID hit, because all of our programming is live and people come to the house, we had to cancel it,” Wilson said.

She dropped most of the organization’s spring season. She lost all her projected bed-and-breakfast business. And in a message posted to the Iowa Writers’ House website last month, Wilson announced her hard but unavoidable news.

“As the situation pushes on, and with no programming in the foreseeable future, we must make drastic changes,” she wrote. “Organizations must weather the storm or adapt, and in the case of this little organization with a big heart, evolution is the only option.”

And so after five years of intimate conversations, communal meals, singing, laughing, crying and lots and lots of writing and reading — all done in the shadow of Harvat — the organization is leaving the historic space and “taking a break to assess our mission and consider our best options for the future.”

Wilson said she plans to focus on her own writing. And the Bicultural Iowa Writers’ Fellowship program will continue — allowing for the release later this year of a third volume of “We the Interwoven: An Anthology of Bicultural Iowa,” including six new authors with multilingual stories of living in Iowa.

News of the goodbye — at least for now — has been met with an outpouring of support and testimonials of the impact the Iowa Writers’ House has had,

“I grew up without a writing community, and it was a very lonely experience,” Erin Casey wrote to Wilson after learning of its pause.

Casey — on the Iowa Writers’ House team and director of The Writers’ Rooms, an offshoot of the house — said her involvement in the project shaped not only her career but her personal growth.

“You, and the Iowa Writers’ House, helped me become a stronger person who felt deserving of companionship, respect, and love,” she wrote. “Watching the house grow, the workshops fill, and the stories come in about how much the IWH touched people’s lives added to the joy. I finally found a place to call home.”

Casey said that while the future is unknown, its legacy is not.

“The IWH will live on in the hearts of the people you touched,” she wrote. “Writers have found friends, support, guidance …”

Although the project isn’t getting a fairy-tale ending, Wilson said the story isn’t over.

“The organization is leaving the space. I’m leaving the space. We’re going on an organizational break so we can determine what a sustainable future might be,” she said. “But it’s really the end of a chapter. And we don’t know what the next chapter will be.”

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com

As the coronavirus spread from the nation’s meatpacking plants to the broader communities where they are located, it burned through a modest duplex in Waterloo.

In the downstairs unit lived Jim Orvis, 65, a beloved friend and uncle who worked in the laundry department at the Tyson Foods pork processing facility, the largest employer in Waterloo. Upstairs was Arthur Scott, a 51-year-old father who was getting his life on track after a prison term for drugs. He worked 25 miles away at the Tyson dog treats factory in Independence.

The two men were not well acquainted. But both fell ill and died last month within days of each other from COVID-19 — casualties of an outbreak linked to the Waterloo plant that spread across the city of 68,000 people.

Similar spread has happened in other communities where the economy centers on raising hogs and cattle and processing their meat, including the hot spots of Grand Island, Neb., and Worthington, Minn.

The virus is “devastating everything,” duplex owner Jose Garcia, who received notification two days apart from his deceased tenants’ relatives, said recently. “These two guys were here last week. Now they are gone. It’s crazy.”

He said it’s possible one of the men infected the other because they shared an entryway, or that they each contracted the virus separately at their workplaces.

The virus threatens the communities’ most vulnerable populations, including low-income workers and their extended families.

“They’re afraid of catching the virus. They’re afraid of spreading it to family members. Some of them are afraid of dying,” said the Rev. Jim Callahan, of the Church of St. Mary in Worthington, a city of 13,000 that has attracted immigrants from across the globe to work at the JBS pork plant.

“One guy said to me, ‘I risked my life coming here. I never thought something that I can’t see could take me out.’ ”

In Grand Island, an outbreak linked to a JBS beef plant that is the city’s largest employer spread rapidly across the rural central Nebraska region, killing more than three dozen people. Many of the dead were elderly residents of long-term care facilities who had relatives or friends employed at the plant.

In Waterloo, local officials blamed Tyson for endangering not only its workers and their relatives but everyone else who leaves home to work or get groceries.

They were furious with the state and federal governments for failing to intervene and for pushing hard to reopen the plant days after public pressure helped idle it.

“We were failed by people who put profit margins and greed before people, predominantly brown people, predominantly immigrants, predominantly people who live in lower socioeconomic quarters,” said Jonathan Grieder, a high school social studies teacher who serves on Waterloo’s City Council. “This is going to be with us for so long. There are going to be very deep scars in our community.”

Grieder cried as he recounted how one of his former students, 19, lost her father to the coronavirus and has been left to raise two younger siblings. Their mother died of cancer last September.

Black Hawk County Sheriff Tony Thompson said he first became concerned after touring the Tyson plant April 10 and witnessing inadequate social distancing and a lack of personal protective equipment. As hundreds of workers began getting sick or staying home out of fear, Thompson joined the mayor and local officials in asking Tyson to close the plant temporarily on April 16.

But Tyson, with support from Gov. Kim Reynolds, waited until April 22 to announce that step after the outbreak intensified. The company warned of the significant economic consequences even a temporary shutdown would create.

The plant, which can process 19,500 hogs per day, resumed limited production this past week.

First, Tyson invited local officials and some employees inside for tours to show the new safety precautions, including plastic shields and more space between workers.

This time, Thompson said he was “reserved in my optimism” that worker safety would be a priority at the plant.

Although Tyson has declined to say how many of the plant’s 2,800 workers had been infected, state health officials announced last week that 444 — or 17 percent — had the virus.

In three weeks, Black Hawk County’s cases skyrocketed from 62 to at least 1,450, or more than 1 percent of the county population. Deaths because of the virus rose from zero to at least 15. Ninety percent of the cases are “attributed or related to the plant,” the county’s public health director said.

Thompson said the plant’s outbreak decimated the community’s “first line of defense” and allowed the virus to spread to nursing homes and the jail he oversees.

“These are the places we did not want to fight the COVID-19 virus,” he said.

The losses mounted.

A refugee from Bosnia died days after falling sick while working on the Tyson production line, leaving behind her heartbroken husband.

The virus also took an intellectually disabled man who died at 73, years after escaping forced labor at a turkey plant and retiring to Waterloo.

Scott, who went by the nickname Dontae, was planning to reunite in June with two teenage children he had not seen in person since he was incarcerated on federal drug charges in 2011.

A former small-time heroin distributor who suffered from addiction, he and his wife divorced during his prison term, and she moved to Mississippi with the children.

Since his 2018 release, friends said he was doing well and rebuilding relationships.

Scott told his daughter, Destiny Proctor, 18, that he suspected he became infected at the Tyson pet food factory, which has stayed open under federal guidance classifying the industry as critical infrastructure.

Proctor and her 15-year-old brother were looking forward to living with their dad this summer. Instead, their final talk was a video call from a hospital where he struggled to talk.

“It was so, so sad,” Proctor, who described her father as funny and caring and frequently sending her cards and gifts, said of their final call. “He told me he couldn’t breathe.”

An Eastern Iowa furniture manufacturer will permanently close two plants, laying off about 370 employees as it drops two lines of business.

Flexsteel Industries will close a factory in Dubuque with 200 employees that manufactures products for the recreational vehicle industry.

The publicly traded company also will close a plant in Starkville, Miss., that produces products for the RV and hospitality industries and employs about 170 people.

In a news release, Flexsteel said its decision to stop manufacturing RV and hospitality furniture was due to rapidly declining customer demand and changing market conditions resulting from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Flexsteel said the two markets already had entered a cyclical decline before the effects of the pandemic occurred.

“It has become clear that what was thought to be a short-term hit to these two already challenged businesses will now extend well into the future and will likely not return to pre-pandemic levels for some time,” said Jerry Dittmer, Flexsteel president and CEO. “This pandemic has been unforgiving to many companies, including ours. We find ourselves making these hard decisions as we attempt to navigate these uncharted business conditions.”

The Dubuque and Starkville plants temporarily were shut down in late March due to sudden drops in demand as many of Flexsteel’s customers shut down in the wake of the pandemic.

Dittmer said the company will be working with its work force, customers and suppliers to determine a feasible ramp-down plan. While it is anticipated that both facilities could close as early as June, the date may fluctuate sooner or later based on business conditions.

Dittmer said the company will increase its focus on home furnishings, e-commerce and workspace solutions.

I like the philosophy behind shooting with primes; that a photographer shouldn’t stand still but instead, continuously move closer, further, lower, or higher relative to his/her subject as a means of establishing a deeper connection. ????????
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Save 50% on my custom Lightroom presets with HOLIDAY50. Link in profile. (at Toronto, Ontario)