Walmart phasing out assault weapons; company cites dwindling customer demand

Walmart, the nation's largest retailer and a staple in rural areas, announced it is phasing out assault weapons, not because of political reasons, but because of lagging interest from customers, Sarah Halzack reports for The Washington Post. The chain, which is in the process of fully phasing out assault weapons, carried MSRs in about one-third of its 4,588 stores nationwide. Kory Lundberg, a Walmart spokesman, told Halzack, "We’re focusing on other hunting and sportsman firearms, such as shotguns and rifles, based on customer demand."

The chain "has recently received pressure from shareholder Trinity Church in New York to reconsider its gun sales policy," Halsack writes. "The church last year filed a lawsuit that aimed to force the retailer to allow a shareholder vote on Trinity’s proposal for the board of directors to more closely review Walmart’s decision to sell weapons with high-capacity magazines. After a federal judge initially ruled that Walmart must allow the shareholder vote, an appeals court later lifted that injunction, meaning Walmart will not be required to include this proposal at its upcoming annual shareholders meeting." (Read more)

Big papers look at gay-friendly university town riven by clerk's stand against same-sex marriage

Friday in Morehead (Getty Images photo by Ty Wright)

The fight over an elected county clerk's refusal to issue marriage licenses because of her religious belief against same-sex marriage has brought international attention to Morehead and Rowan County, Kentucky, populations 6,800 and 23,700, respectively. Morehead is not a typical Appalachian-foothills county seat; it is the home of Morehead State University, enrollment 11,000, and has a vibrant gay community, and that has made for some lively interactions, including some vigorous protests -- but no physical altercations.

Still, Richard Fausset of The New York Times reports, "People here are confronting a question similar to one being faced elsewhere around the country: Is there a road back to the old politesse and grace that have helped this area manage its town-gown tensions for decades? Or does the bitter clash of worldviews reflect an unraveling of whatever it was that once knit disparate people together?"

Fausset and Kentucky freelancer Jim Higdon, writing for The Washington Post, note that Morehead is one of only eight Kentucky towns with "fairness ordinances" banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. It was adopted without public opposition, Fausset quotes the American Civil Liberties Union as saying.

"For years, gay members of the university community and Apostolic Christians have tip-toed around each other," Higdon reports. "But the Supreme Court’s decision in June in favor of same-sex marriage made a collision perhaps inevitable, as the only thing standing in the way of gays who wanted to marry was the signature of Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, a member of the Apostolic Church."

The gay community in Morehead is probably the reason that among the three Kentucky clerks who have stopped issuing marriage licenses, Davis is the only one to have been sued (and sent to jail for defying a federal judge's order). "There is no LGBT community to speak of in those other rural areas," Higdon notes. For coverage from The Morehead News, a thrice-weekly, click here.

Daily Yonder asks what the candidates should be saying to get rural votes, and gets many answers

Hillary Clinton is slipping in the polls, but she is the only presidential candidate who has issued a rural platform, Dee Davis and Isaac Boone Davis point out for the Daily Yonder: "With all the speeches, ads, meet-and-greets, publicity stunts and general folderol, why is so little being said about rural issues? The Daily Yonder asked folks what they think the next president should be talking about to get the rural vote." The responses dealt with agriculture, education, housing, health, forestry, culture, labor, transportation and investment, from a wide range of experts, activists and people in the front lines. Read it here. For a Yonder story about the National Rural Assembly later this week, go here.

Critics of contract farming boosted by HBO host John Oliver, who does long segments on issues

John Oliver of "Last Week Tonight" (HBO)

Critics of contract poultry farming got a boost from John Oliver, host of the HBO show "Last Week Tonight," with his May segment "that illustrated how the companies most associated with chicken in the U.S. take advantage of farmers. Since then, things haven't been quite the same," Jason Abbruzzese reports for Mashable.

"In 18 minutes, he did what we've been trying for 30 years to do and that is just reach a general, broader audience," North Carolina chicken farmer Craig Watts told Abbruzzese. "The story that he told, I cannot tell you how hard that is to tell to someone that is not really familiar with it."

"Plenty in the media are willing to take on tough subjects, but none are creating the type of wake" that Oliver does each Sunday night, Abbruzzese writes. Page views on sites about contract chicken farming spikes after Oliver's May 17 segment (Parse.ly chart):

California EPA plans to list Roundup as carcinogen

The California Environmental Protection Agency wants to list glyphosate, brand name Roundup, "one of the most widely-used herbicides in agriculture, and three other chemicals to a list of carcinogens under the state's Proposition 65 law," Spencer Chase reports for Agri-Pulse.

"Under the law, substances identified as carcinogens by the International Agency for Research on Cancer are to be added to the list. There is no separate evaluation of the evidence considered by the agency," Chase writes. "In March, the IARC, an arm of the World Health Organization, said glyphosate was 'probably carcinogenic to humans,' a move widely unpopular with many in agriculture."

Sam Delson, a spokesman for the agency's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, told Agri-Pulse that listing doesn't ban use or sale of products, "but businesses with 10 or more employees that use chemicals on this list must provide a 'clear and reasonable warning' of the product's potential dangers." The agency is developing a "no signifcant risk" level at which a warning would not be required.

A spokeswoman for Monsanto, the maker of Roundup, told Agri-Pulse that "The IARC classification overlooked decades of thorough and robust analysis by regulatory agencies, including a multi-year assessment just completed on behalf of the regulatory authority in the European Union. Another registration review is currently underway by the U.S. EPA.  No regulatory agency in the world considers glyphosate to be a carcinogen." (Read more)

Judge keeps water-rule order limited to 13 states

A federal judge in North Dakota has declined to make nationwide his ruling that has blocked in 13 states the Environmental Protection Agency's redefinition of "waters of the United States," perhaps the most important term in the Clean Water Act.

U.S. District Judge Ralph Erickson's injunction against the WOTUS rule came in a lawsuit filed by the states of Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming. "His decision conflicted with other district court rulings in other lawsuits, including one brought by 11 different states," Jeremy P. Jacobs and Annie Snider report for Greenwire. "EPA and the Army contended that the injunction only applied to those 13 states," and "argued that a national injunction was unwarranted, in part because several states have indicated their support for the rule. . . . The agencies put the rule into effect as planned for the remaining 37 on Aug. 28."

The 13 states and the American Farm Bureau Federation said the injunction should apply nationwide, but Erickson rejected the states' motion for that Friday. "Four courts have denied preliminary injunctions in cases on the issue before the court," he noted. "Seven states and the District of Columbia have moved to intervene on behalf of the agencies in the consolidated matter before the Sixth Circuit" Court of Appeals, based in Cincinnati.

As coal slips, so do school rolls in coal communities, putting some schools at risk of closure

Some coal communities are seeing low enrollment numbers in public schools—because of the loss of coal jobs—and fear that fewer students will lead to less funding and could put schools at risk of closing. In Boone County, West Virginia (Epodunk map), parents are concerned about rumors that Jeffrey-Spencer Elementary School will shut its doors, Hillary Hall reports for WOWK 13 in Charleston-Huntington. The school has 109 students.

"While the Boone County Board of Education could not confirm if the school was slated to be shut down, Superintendent John Hudson did say that the county has lost millions of dollars in taxes and if the school were to close the decision would need to be made by December," Hall writes. Christian Foster, mother of a special-education student, told Hall, "A lot of us are prepared to do whatever we have to do. Until it's set in stone and they say it's closed and the books and teachers are out of is building, we're not going to quit."

In Eastern Kentucky, enrollment in the the Pike County School District is down by more than 200 students this year, the third time in four years enrollment has gone down, Chase Ellis reports for the Appalachian News-Express. The district reported 8,600 students this fall, down from 8,887 at the beginning of the 2014-15 school year. (Kentucky Department of Revenue map: Pike County)

Director of Pupil Personnel Joe Moore told Ellis, “We lose money for every kid that we lose. I don’t know the exact number, but it’s more than $20 per day per student that we lose. If jobs were created, if the coal industry was able to come back, if people didn’t have to move away for jobs we wouldn’t see this, but we are." (The News-Express is behind a paywall.)

Arkansas isn't really a coal state, but it burns coal, and the proposed shutoff of a coal plant in White Bluff—local officials are phasing out coal for natural gas and solar and/or wind power—could have a drastic effect on the White Hall School District, which is the biggest local beneficiary of taxes from the coal plant, Emily Walkenhorst reports for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. In 2013 the Jefferson County (Wikipedia map) school district closed Redfield Middle School because of low enrollment and reduced financial viability.

Supt. Larry Smith said that if the plant closed completely, it would result in an estimated $1 million in losses for the school district, which has an annual budget of $25 million, Walkenhorst writes. Smith told her, "That's 17 teaching positions that you would lose funding for. We couldn't cut 17 teachers right now because we would be out of compliance with standards."

More than a third of eligible rural children do not participate in free school lunch program

Rural school children eligible for free lunches participate in the federal program at lower rates than urban children, says a report by the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. Overall, 63 percent of eligible rural children participate in the program compared to 70 percent of eligible urban children. Only 59 percent of eligible suburban children participate. (Carsey graphic)

Overall, 63.5 percent of eligible children participate in the lunch program and 52 percent in the breakfast program. The programs are designed to help children living in households with incomes below 185 percent of the federal income poverty guidelines (below $44,097 for a family of four in 2013).

"Enrollment in these programs may be moderate for several reasons: for example, there may be stigma associated with eating school meals, or food meeting required nutritional standards may not appeal to children," study author Jessica Carson writes. "The breakfast program may have especially low enrollment because students with long commutes or later-arriving buses might not arrive early enough to eat breakfast before the school day begins."

States that are home to 37% of illegal immigrants allow those residents to obtain driver's licenses

Ten states—mostly out West—and Washington, D.C., issue driver’s licenses, or similar documents, to illegal immigrants, reports The Pew Charitable Trusts. The 10 states—California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Vermont and Washington—and Washington, D.C., are home to 37 percent of unauthorized immigrants. Many of the 11 million illegal immigrants work in agriculture.

"In 2013 alone, eight states and the District of Columbia passed laws making unauthorized immigrants eligible for driver’s licenses (one was later repealed)," reports Pew. "In 2015, Delaware and Hawaii enacted similar laws. As of this report’s publication, neither state had begun issuing licenses."

"States consider legislation regarding these immigrants’ access to driver’s licenses in the context of the federal REAL ID Act, the 2005 law that created national standards for state driver’s licenses that can be used for federal identification," reports Pew. "This law expressly authorizes states to provide licenses to unauthorized immigrants but only if the licenses are distinct from regular ones in specific ways. State decisions also are likely to be affected by the federal executive actions announced in November 2014 that, if fully implemented, could allow millions of unauthorized immigrants who meet certain conditions to acquire the documents needed to apply for regular driver’s licenses under existing state laws." (Pew map)

Saying 'I do, I do, I do,' more than 9 million Americans have been married at least three times

Americans love to get married so much that more than 9 million U.S. residents—or 5.3 percent of the married population—have been married at least three times, Christopher Ingraham reports for The Washington Post. State-level data shows where residents are most likely to get married at least three times, and several states with large rural populations lead the way.

Arkansas is No. 1 in serial marriage, with 10.8 percent of married residents having been married at least three times, Ingraham writes. Oklahoma is second at 9.7 percent, followed by: Idaho, 8.7 percent; Alabama, 8.6 percent; and Nevada and Tennessee, 8.5 percent. In Kentucky, where critics of Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis—who has refused to issue marriage licenses because of religious beliefs—have taken her to task for being married four times, 7.9 percent of state residents have been married at least three times.

"By contrast, states in the northeast and upper Midwest have the lowest rates of serial marriage," Ingraham writes. "New Jersey has the absolute lowest rate, with only 1.9 percent of ever-married residents having been married three times or more. I've put the numbers for all the states in a table below." (Post map)

Initiative looks to use art to drive economic development in impoverished rural communities

A new initiative, Performing Our Future, is creating a model to show how art and culture can drive community and economic development in impoverished communities, states a joint press release from the governing organizations. Three communities will receive funding for two years to "demonstrate how artistic expression leads to community-wide empowerment and how the assets of local culture can develop economic sustainability."

Funding is from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, ArtPlace America and the National Endowment for the Arts, the release states. "A union of economists, artists and scholars is behind the initiative’s methodology: the rural arts and humanities institution Appalshop and its Roadside Theater; the economists and students at Lafayette College’s Economic Empowerment and Global Learning Project in Easton, Pa.; and the national consortium of 100 colleges advancing public scholarship, Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life. Key elements in the methodology include creating public performances based on local stories and mapping community assets to identify opportunities for value and wealth creation through market exchange."

"To enrich learning, ensure national impact and develop and disseminate findings, the three local projects will interface with each other and with the national research team of economists, artists, scholars and students," the release states. "The local college partners in each community will be drawn from Imagining America’s network of more than 100 higher education institutions elevating higher education’s public purposes."

"One of the project sites is Appalshop’s home of Letcher County, Kentucky, a county in the nation’s poorest and sickest congressional district, which has developed and enacted Performing Our Future’s methodology for two years," states the release. "Community residents are exploring new strategies for entrepreneurship to replace the decline of the coal mining industry" by translating "the region’s cultural assets into new and expanded businesses, leadership development programs and tourism." Appalshop earlier this year was one of 38 recipients of the 2015 National Grants Program.

Farm dust helps children raised on dairy farms have reduced allergies and asthma, study says

A study published Thursday in Science says that "growing up on a dairy farm protects children from allergy, hay fever and asthma." Using mice as subjects, researchers said "that chronic exposure to low-dose endotoxin or farm dust protects mice from developing house dust mite induced asthma." Researchers said children growing up on dairy farms "breathe air containing bacterial components, which reduce the overall reactivity of the immune system."

The research is related to the hygiene hypothesis, "where a lack of exposure to microbes as a tyke leads to more allergy and asthma," Rachel Feltman reports for The Washington Post. "There's increasing evidence that farms have the best germs for preventing respiratory problems and allergic reactions later in life. One study found that just 25 percent of children living on Swiss farms reacted to common allergens like dust mites, pollen, animals and mold, while 45 percent of children in the general population reacted." Among Amish children, the rate is 8 percent.

"Scientists believe that the bacteria native to farms, especially ones that house livestock, may trigger something in children who live nearby," Feltman writes. "Scientists induced dust mite allergies in mice, then showed that exposure to dust from a dairy farm made early in life made them immune. Then, they studied the mechanism that was protecting the mice, making their mucous membranes less likely to react to the allergens. They found a protein called A20, which the mice were producing when exposed to the farm dust. When the researchers knocked out the A20 in their subjects' lungs, the farm dust stopped protecting them from allergic reactions." (Read more)

Ky. clerk refusing to issue marriage licenses jailed; same-sex couple gets license Friday morning

UPDATED, Sept. 4: "James Yates and William Smith Jr. paid $35.50 and filled out some paperwork early Friday to become the first couple to get a marriage license in Rowan County since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage June 26, prompting a license ban by County Clerk Kim Davis," John Cheves reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader. (Herald-Leader photo by Pablo Alcala: Rowan County deputy clerk Brian Mason shook hands with William Smith Jr., center, and James Yates on Friday morning after granting them a marriage license)

A federal judge today ordered an elected Kentucky county clerk jailed for contempt of court after she refused on religious grounds to obey his order to resume issuing marriage licenses. U.S. District Judge David Bunning said he chose not to fine Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis because her supporters were planning to raise money to pay the fine. "Plaintiffs in the case had asked Bunning to fine Davis, but they specifically requested that he not jail her," notes John Cheves of the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/09/03/4018514_federal-judge-jails-rowan-county.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

Bunning ordered Davis's six deputies to issue licenses, and five of them said they would comply. "The one holdout was Ms. Davis’s son, Nathan," Alan Blinder reports for The New York Times. "Another hearing was scheduled for later Thursday, and Judge Bunning was expected to consider a request that Ms. Davis be released if she agreed to not interfere with marriage licenses for same-sex couples."

Bunning gave Davis "the chance to stay out of jail if she 'purged her contempt' by allowing one of her deputies to sign marriage licenses in her place," James Higdon and Sandhya Somashekhar report for The Washington Post. "But through an attorney, Davis told the judge that 'She does not grant her authority nor would allow any employee to issue those licenses.' Davis’s decision means the 49-year-old elected public servant will be kept in custody indefinitely as the legal wrangling over her case continues. It also suggests she is willing to martyr herself for her cause, which is the right of public officials to be guided by their personal religious beliefs."

Two other Kentucky clerks, in Casey and Whitley counties, have refused to issue marriage licenses because of their objections to same-sex marriage, but they have not been sued. Neither have any of those in Alabama taking the same stand. The group Freedom to Marry says its surveys of clerks have found 13 in Alabama refusing to issue licenses, Greg Sargent reports for the Post.

More than one-third of 867,000 veterans with pending VA applications for health care are dead

Of the 867,000 veterans that had pending applications—as of Sept. 30, 2014—to receive health care from the Department of Veterans Affairs, 307,143 were dead, said a report released Wednesday by the department's inspector general. More than half of the applications—477,000—did not have application dates, which means the watchdog “could not reliably determine how many records were associated with actual applications for enrollment."

Rural areas are home to 5.6 million veterans, and the VA has been criticized for making veterans wait one month or longer for appointments. The VA, which has said it has no way to purge the list of dead applicants, has publicly acknowledged its system needs improvement.

The report, which recommended a total overhaul of the VA record-keeping system that could take years, found that VA workers incorrectly marked thousands of unprocessed health-care applications as completed and "may have deleted 10,000 or more electronic transactions over the past five years," Emily Wax-Thibodeaux reports for The Washington Post.

Scott Davis, a whistleblower and program specialist at the VA enrollment center in Atlanta, "said he told the VA that 34,000 men and women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan are losing their guaranteed five-year eligibility for VA service due to 'systematic obstacles,'" Wax-Thibodeaux writes. "He said that combat veterans are not required to verify their income when applying for VA benefits. But the enrollment applications of 34,000 such veterans were delayed when the VA system classified them as pending."

Linda Halliday, the VA’s acting inspector general, told The Associated Press "that the agency’s Health Eligibility Center 'has not effectively managed its business processes to ensure the consistent creation and maintenance of essential data,'" Wax-Thibodeaux writes.

D.C. reporter visits county labeled worst in natural amenities and learns a lesson about rural life

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Amenities Index, which ranked the most desirable counties to live in based on scenery and climate, has received criticism for downgrading counties for having cold, wintry winters and lacking bodies of water and varied topography. Perhaps no reporter took more heat than The Washington Post's Christopher Ingraham, who offended residents of Red Lake County, Minnesota, for pointing out that it was dead last on the list.

"As a reporter, I'm used to folks disagreeing with me, especially when covering contentious topics like guns, gay marriage and drug policy," Ingraham writes. "But until I wrote about the natural amenities index I had never been disagreed with so much. And so politely. Could it really be that bad? I had to find out. At the invite of local businessman Jason Brumwell, I took a trip up there last week to see the truth behind the numbers. I wanted to find out what life in America's worst county was really like."

"Brumwell welcomed the media attention the county's last-place ranking brought and encouraged other businesses to do the same," Ingraham writes. "My original story hadn't quite framed it this way, but some locals took it to mean that we called their county ugly. So, soon after my article went up, restaurants and bars began offering specials on 'ugly burgers' and 'ugly wings.' Officials in Red Lake Falls, the county's largest town, with a population of 1,410, floated the idea of renaming next year's Summerfest the 'Uglyfest.'"

"In the course of my visit, I learned how crucial farming is to the local economy," Ingraham writes. "Agriculture directly or indirectly supports a lot of economic activity in the county. And the small-town narrative we're all used to hearing—of boom and decline, of good jobs leaving for overseas and Main Streets hollowed out by relentlessly low prices—doesn't really seem to apply here. The economic opportunity is a big reason many people stay, and some others who left eventually make their way back here." (Christopher Ingraham)

"Despite a population of only 4,000, the county supports two elementary schools and two high schools," Ingraham writes. "Each of the high schools graduates roughly two dozen students each year, and even the county's poor have a remarkably good shot of becoming middle class later in life, according to a 2013 study by Harvard University's Equality of Opportunity Project. In fact, by most economic metrics, the county looks pretty good. The unadjusted employment rate in July was 4.6 percent, well below the national average. The median household income is $48,000, while the median home value is about $89,000, according to the U.S. Census. The poverty rate is 11.9 percent, below the U.S. average of 15.4 percent."

"What I found most striking is how friendly everyone I'd met had been," Ingraham writes. "They were fiercely proud of their community in a way I'd never seen before—not even during my childhood in small-town upstate New York. . . . Over and over, the folks I spoke with told me it was that sense of community that kept them here, and that contributed to that enormous outpouring of civic pride in response to my original article."

"There's perhaps something amiss in a ranking that places Red Lake County at the absolute bottom of the nation when it comes to scenery and climate," Ingraham writes. "As I noted in my original story, the USDA's index places a lot of emphasis on mild weather and a little less on true scenic beauty, which of course is harder to quantify. But there's no doubt that the Red Lake County region is flat-out gorgeous. You can see that beauty everywhere, from the open farm country to the craggy bluffs and hills of the river valley." (Ingraham photo: Red Lake River)

"When people and places halfway across the country are just a mouse-click away on your computer, it's easy to assume that the we live in a nation made small and manageable by technology," Ingraham writes. "But traveling to a place like Red Lake County, hours away from any major metro area, is a reminder that in much of the country, the rhythms of daily life are, still, markedly different than the coastal city grind of long commutes and high-octane jobs. For some of us, it takes a place as small as Red Lake County to drive home just how big this country really is." (Read more)

Study finds radioactive contaminants in coal ash in Illinois, Appalachian and Powder River basins

A study by researchers at Duke University and the University of Kentucky published in Environmental Science & Technology found the presence of radioactive contaminants in coal ash in the Illinois, Appalachian and Powder River basins, reports Duke. "The study found that levels of radioactivity in the ash were up to five times higher than in normal soil and up to 10 times higher than in the parent coal itself because of the way combustion concentrates radioactivity." The study is the first to compare radioactivity in coal and coal ash, said researchers.

Avner Vengosh, professor of geochemistry and water quality at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, said, “Until now, metals and contaminants such as selenium and arsenic have been the major known contaminants of concern in coal ash. This study raises the possibility we should also be looking for radioactive elements, such as radium isotopes and lead-210, and including them in our monitoring efforts.” He said coal ash disposal sites are not currently monitored for radioactivity.

The Illinois basin exhibited the most levels of radioactivity, followed by the Appalachian and then the Powder River, which is in Wyoming and Montana, reports Duke. "The tests also showed that the ratio of radium to uranium in the parent coal was consistent with the ratio found in its residual coal ash." (Read more)

District Court vacates 'threatened' status for lesser prairie chicken

A U.S. District Court on Tuesday vacated federal protections for the lesser prairie chicken, which was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act last year by the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), Devin Henry reports for The Hill. U.S. District Judge Robert Junell said FWS "did not properly consider active conservation efforts for the bird when listing it last March." The oil and gas industry has challenged the listing of the bird, arguing that the voluntary program would have done enough to protect the bird, which lives mainly in Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Colorado. (Encyclopedia of Earth map: location of lesser prairie chickens)

"The court ruled that the FWS should have better predicted how many people would participate in the protection program before moving forward with an Endangered Species Act listing," Henry writes. The judge wrote, “The Court finds FSW did conduct an analysis; however, this analysis was neither ‘rigorous’ nor valid as FWS failed to consider important questions and material information necessary to make a proper . . . evaluation.”

Republicans, who have been critical of the listing, applauded the ruling, Henry writes. Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, told Henry, "The U.S. District Court decision ruled that by listing the Lesser Prairie Chicken as threatened, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been illegally steamrolling states by their own secret rules."

Conservationists criticized the decision, Henry writes. Noah Greenwald, the endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement, “This decision turns the Endangered Species Act on its head by concluding the Fish and Wildlife Service should have given the benefit of the doubt to the oil and gas industry, rather than a species that has seen its habitat and populations vanish." (Read more)

Free webinar Sept. 23 to examine dangers youth face during harvest season

The National Children’s Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety is hosting a free webinar on youth safety, "Harvest Season: Are the Children Safe?" at noon (EDT) on Sept. 23. The webinar will look at "actual childhood injury incidents, preview an injury news clippings website and explore the issues and hazards that children are exposed to on farms," such as the dangers of tractors and equipment, engulfment and suffocation hazards with grain harvesting and storage, hazards resulting from harvesting crops and exposures to hazards while visiting farms. Proven safety strategies and resources will also be discussed. A question and answer period will follow a brief presentation. To register, click here.

Boone Newspapers expands to Ky. with purchase of The State Journal in Frankfort, the state capital

A recent front page had coverage
of a scandal in the legislature.

The State Journal in Frankfort, Ky., can be a difficult newspaper to run because it has two main audiences. The daily is fundamentally a community newspaper because its circulation is almost totally limited to Franklin County, which falls just short of being its own metropolitan area, with a population of 49,285 in 2010. By the broadest definition, that makes it rural, and most of the county is. However, Frankfort is also the state capital (the nation's fifth smallest, with a population of 27,741). That makes it the the residence of about 8,000 state employees, creating a high demand for state government and political news not normally found in a newspaper market of that size. So, The State Journal is a hybrid between a metro paper and community paper.

For 53 years, the Dix family of Wooster, Ohio, has owned The State Journal. Today, Dix Communications sold the paper to Frankfort Newsmedia LLC, mostly owned by Alabama-based Boone Newspapers Inc., for an undisclosed price. "Other owners are Natchez-based Carpenter Newsmedia LLC (CNL) and key BNI personnel," Boone says on its website. "Jim Boone of Tuscaloosa is BNI’s chairman. Todd Carpenter of Natchez is BNI’s president and chief executive officer and principal owner of CNL. . . . BNI owns and manages 70 newspapers in similar-sized communities in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Tennessee, Minnesota, Michigan and Ohio. The State Journal is its first Kentucky newspaper."

The State Journal will continue to be edited by Phil Case, 68, a longtime employee who has been editor since July 2014. “I am delighted to be afforded the opportunity to continue to direct the news operation with the Boone folks,” Case said in the Boone story. “I have been very impressed with their dedication to the communities in which their newspapers are located and their passion for local news will do nothing but enhance this newspaper going forward.” The paper's general manager will be Lloyd Lynch, a longtime employee who has been advertising director and once ran the pressroom. Following some equipment problems recently, the paper has been printed at The Courier-Journal in Louisville.

Labor Day weekend is one of the busiest and deadliest times for driving rural highways

Nearly 33 million drivers are expected to hit the road over Labor Day weekend, Greg Abel reports for CARCHEX, a Baltimore-based company that provides extended auto warranties and inspections. That means many rural highways and interstates will be jam packed with people. (Ann Arbor News photo by Melanie Maxwell: a fatal accident on U.S, 23 in Michigan)

Drivers should try to travel during non-peak times, like early Saturday morning, Abel writes. He also suggests traveling to somewhere that will be less crowded, always checking travel conditions, obeying posted signs, driving carefully and if driving on toll roads, purchasing a pass that lets drivers avoid lines.

Labor Day weekend is the deadliest weekend of the year in some states, such as Michigan, where Michigan State Police say the state averaged 20 deaths per year from 1972 to 2014, Julie Mack reports for MLive. Numbers are down 24 percent in the past decade, down to six last year, a record during the 43 years of available data. Alcohol and drugs were involved in 36 percent of the state's vehicular deaths in 2014, and 56 percent of fatal crashes occurred on a local street or country road, with the majority occurring in rural areas.

To accommodate extra traffic in the popular tourist region around the Virgin River, a 200-mile tributary of the Colorado River that runs through Zion National Park and northwestern Arizona’s Virgin River Gorge before emptying into southern Nevada’s Lake Mead, the Arizona Department of Transportation is opening an extra lane on Interstate 15, Mori Kessler reports for St. George News. The area has been part of a major reconstruction project.

"Labor Day weekend ends what officials call the 100 deadliest days on Utah roads," reports KSL in Salt Lake City. As of Monday, the state has had 189 traffic deaths this year.