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This land is our land: States crack down on foreign-owned farm fields

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:52:13 GMT

Kevin Hardy | Stateline.org (TNS)Andy Gipson gets concerned even when American allies such as the Netherlands and Germany invest in large swaths of Mississippi’s farmland.“It just bothers me at a gut level,” he said.For Gipson, Mississippi’s commissioner of agriculture and commerce, the growing trend of foreign ownership could threaten what he views as the state’s most valuable asset: the land that grows its forests, rice and cotton.“It is our ability as a country, as a state to produce our own food, our own fiber and our own shelter,” he told Stateline. “And I think every acre that’s sold to anybody outside of this country is one less acre that we have to rely on for our own self-interest, our own national food security.”Gipson has spent recent months studying the growing amount of his state’s farmland being bought up by foreign interests. He chaired a study committee that just issued a 363-page report on the issue requested by the legislature after a lawmaker had offered a bill to...

Not getting a COVID-19 vaccine could lead to preterm birth in pregnant women, new study shows

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:52:13 GMT

Hanna Webster | (TNS) Pittsburgh Post-GazetteCOVID-19 infection can lead to preterm birth, a study published last week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows, but getting vaccinated protects against it.Researchers found a serious adverse effect on preterm birth from COVID infection during pregnancy, a risk that had plummeted to zero by fall 2022, following widespread COVID vaccination among pregnant women.Doctors at local hospital systems have noticed similar trends and mirrored results among pregnant patients in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.“We had pregnant patients who would come in very ill,” said Dr. Michael Aziz, a maternal fetal medicine specialist at Allegheny Health Network, which he said pushed to vaccinate the pregnant population early on.“We saw more pregnant patients getting vaccinated … and then a reduction in emergency room visits, ICU visits and a reduction in preterm births and stillbirths,” he said.Physic...

How a local museum helped 100-plus Chicago Bears employees tell their stories through sneakers for My Cause, My Cleats campaign

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:52:13 GMT

When Sneakerhead University first opened its doors on State Street in fall 2022, co-founders Shay Belvin and Mykol Branch had one room with three tables, a bucket of 12 paints and a desire to preserve sneaker history and tell stories using sneakers.While students at North Carolina Central, a historically Black university in Durham, N.C., Belvin and Branch came up with the idea to sell Black empowerment T-shirts through their now-defunct label “HBCU Made.” It was during that time they also had the idea to create a sneaker museum.“We wanted a creative way to tell the Black story of different topics and the movement of America,” Belvin told the Tribune. “Selfie museums were really huge (at the time).”The two studied marketing in college, and after graduation Belvin, a Detroit native, came to Chicago to start a museum while Branch initially returned home to Baltimore to open one. They chose Chicago, they said, because they could list brands and people...

Massachusetts shelter site at state transportation building closing, families transitioned to Quincy

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:52:13 GMT

An overnight shelter at the state’s transportation building in Boston shuttered its doors Friday, as officials transitioned local and migrant homeless families staying there to a college dorm in Quincy.The roughly three weeks families stayed in the building marked one of the first times Gov. Maura Healey turned to a state-owned building in downtown Boston to house those waiting for shelter placement.Operations at the transportation building will shift to Eastern Nazarene College, where the Healey administration previously said they contracted Australian-based AMI Expeditionary Healthcare to run a temporary shelter.A contract between the state and the organization obtained through a public records request authorizes up to $11.5 million in spending for two temporary shelter sites, the locations of which were redacted in the document provided to the Herald.Emergency Assistance Director Lt. Gen. Scott Rice said the Healey administration will also open an additional site in Revere where ...

Some states’ economies cool even as the nation’s sizzles

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:52:13 GMT

Tim Henderson | Stateline.org (TNS)A still-roaring national economy grew at an unexpectedly robust 5.2% annual rate in the third quarter of this year, but early indicators show a more mixed picture for many states heading into the holidays.The preliminary unemployment rate rose in 38 states and economic output slowed in 32 states in October, according to a Stateline analysis of preliminary federal economic data. Yet states where the economy is still humming — such as Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia — have added hundreds of thousands of jobs since 2020 and are helping to keep national output strong.Economists note that the uptick in the jobless rate may be the result of long-inactive workers seeking jobs; those job-searchers are included in the unemployment rate.Most economists surveyed by Stateline said the states with elevated unemployment rates and lagging production were experiencing growing pains as they continue to recover from the pandemic. A modest slowdo...

30-year mortgage rates keep falling, creep back toward 7%

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:52:13 GMT

Jeff Ostrowski | (TNS) Bankrate.comMortgage rates dropped again this week, according to Bankrate’s national survey.The average rate on 30-year fixed mortgages retreated to 7.23% this week, down from 7.41% the previous week, according to Bankrate’s weekly national survey of large lenders.The recent reprieve could signal a prolonged drop in mortgage rates, housing economists say. The average rate on 30-year home loans in October topped 8%, but that’s changing because of a number of factors, including a slowing job market and signs that the Federal Reserve’s ongoing war on inflation is working.“Part of it is the Federal Reserve is pausing on interest rate hikes,” says Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at Bright MLS, a real estate listing service in the Mid-Atlantic region. “Of course, mortgage rates are affected by things other than what the Fed does. For example, mortgage applications are down, and lenders are competing for a shrinking pool of applicants.”Meanwhile, yields on 10-...

After listless effort against Buffalo, Bruins need more from everyone

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:52:13 GMT

The good news is the injury suffered by top defenseman Charlie McAvoy on Thursday night at the Garden does not appear to be serious and is not a head injury, said Bruins coach Jim Montgomery.Montgomery, in fact, did not rule out McAvoy for Saturday’s matinee against the upstart Arizona Coyotes. He’s “hopeful,” in fact, McAvoy can play.That is a very promising development after McAvoy left the game after appearing dazed from J.J. Peterka’s reverse hit.But what remained unsettling is that the B’s were well on their way to delivering the stinker before McAvoy got hut, and it appeared to be a direct carryover from the previous day’s lethargic practice.It is no coincidence that practice was one missing captain Brad Marchand, who was home in Nova Scotia to attend the funeral of his grandmother. Marchand has long been a catalyst to ignite the B’s, whether it was in a game or in a lifeless practice. That was true long before the ‘C’ was put on...

U.S. and UAE-backed initiative announces $9 billion more for agricultural innovation projects

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:52:13 GMT

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — An additional $9 billion of funding to tackle agriculture’s role in the climate crisis was announced on the sidelines of the United Nations climate talks on Friday.The Agriculture Innovation Mission (AIM) for Climate, a joint initiative led by the United States and the United Arab Emirates that debuted at the climate talks in Glasgow two years ago, now has $17 billion to invest in agriculture and food systems innovation. Food systems — all the processes involved in making, shipping and disposing of food — account for about a third of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.Countries have been convening at the annual Conference of the Parties to discuss and negotiate what to do about climate change that has Earth bumping up against the Paris agreement target of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since industrial times. With difficult negotiations still underway on how aggressively countries might agree to cut foss...

Fox snatcher: Footage shows furry intruder swiped cameras from Arizona backyard

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:52:13 GMT

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — An Arizona woman got a huge shock when surveillance footage showed the thief who stole her backyard cameras was four-legged and fluffy-tailed. Esmeralda Egurrola, of Tucson, noticed on Monday that her three motion-activated cameras appeared off-line. So, she checked the most recent recording in each camera from an app on her cellphone. Three videos had documented an entire heist carried out by a gray fox.“I saw him sniffing and messing with camera one. I went to the second video, which was camera two. It caught him with camera one in his mouth.,” Egurrola told The Associated Press on Friday. “That’s when I knew, ‘Omigosh I think he took all of them.’ ”Egurrola shared video and photos of the intruder fox-trotting away on Facebook. It didn’t take long for reactions to snowball. It was first reported by the Arizona Daily Star.She tried to search for the cameras, which were a gift and cost around $200, but saw no sign of them. She belie...

Prosecutors in Guatemala ask court to lift president-elect’s immunity before inauguration

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:52:13 GMT

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Prosecutors in Guatemala on Friday asked a court to strip President-elect Bernardo Arévalo of his immunity, the third time they have done so since he won the election in August.Arévalo is scheduled to take office on Jan. 14, and it was unclear whether the prosecutors’ continued targeting of him and his party could interfere with the inauguration.The most recent request from prosecutors cites alleged irregularities in the way Arévalo’s Seed Movement party gathered signatures to register years earlier.Authorities arrested a number of Seed Movement members in recent weeks. They also previously requested stripping Arévalo of immunity over alleged mishandling of party funds, and requested that he and his vice president-elect also lose their immunity for allegedly making supportive comments on social media about the takeover of a public university last year.Attorney General Consuelo Porras, who has been sanctioned by the U.S. government, has faced months of ...