As Americans continue to face stubbornly high grocery prices, many are searching for root causes. Turns out, mysterious add-on fees might be part of the problem.
Are U.S. voters ready to help pay for child care services as a part of their community's labor and services infrastructure? Communities in Sonoma County, Calif., St. Paul, Minn., and most of Austin, Texas, are about to find out.
Since American colonial times, Appalachians have logged the region's vast forests and run sawmills to prepare cut wood for use, but the industry has been hampered by multiple economic setbacks and faces an uncertain future.
The harvest is plentiful and the workers are robots. That's the plan for some U.S. farms. "A growing number of companies are bringing automation to agriculture. It could ease the sector’s deepening labor shortage, help farmers manage costs, and protect workers from extreme heat."
In most parts of the country, last year's winter was mild. So mild, in fact, Wisconsin snowmobile enthusiasts dubbed it the "lost winter" because there was so little snowfall, reports Cheyenne Kramer of Drovers. "But according to Eric Snodgrass, senior science fellow at Nutrien Ag Solutions, the consensus is that the months ahead are going to look a lot different."
A new approach is helping mothers recovering from opioid addiction and newborns with opioid exposure stay together after birth. Historically, babies born with opioid exposure have been separated from their mothers and received heavy medications in neuro-intensive units, but "research has since indicated that in many, if not most, cases, those extreme measures are unnecessary.
Across the country, rural fire departments are struggling to attract, train and retain volunteer firefighters. In Oglethorpe County, Georgia, the small unincorporated town of Vesta had a fire department facing closure until they put a call out to the community for help.
An Appalachian student from West Virginia heads off to college at the University of Pennsylvania, dubbed "Penn" by most students, and encounters a community where she doesn't know how or when she will ever fit in and keep up with her urban counterparts.