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Are solar farms becoming the new NIMBY?

What do solar farms have in common with fracking, strip clubs, halfway houses and landfills? On the surface, it might be hard to see. Solar farms and fracking couldn’t be more different, with one promoting green energy and the other built on fossil fuels. Adult entertainment might be questionable, but halfway houses are about encouraging recovery from drug addiction or criminal behavior. Landfills are unpleasant but necessary. So where do they all intersect? They are all things people have protested. If they must be allowed, fine, but put them somewhere else. On Tuesday, Derry ...

Data on stock ownership not whole picture

While a Gallup poll this year indicated about 62% of Americans own stocks, the numbers are not quite what they seem. Many people may have retirement money in a 401(k) or sock away savings in an investment account of some kind. Far fewer actually own shares. Federal Reserve data says direct ownership is about 21%. Much of that can be traced to increases in apps that make it easy to buy and sell even the smallest amounts. But financial services company Motley Fool reports the wealthiest 1% of Americans hold 50% of all stock while the bottom 50% hold 1%. That’s a graphic ...

Threats of violence have real impact

Last week, two children were killed when a gunman opened fire during a Mass at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis. Eighteen others were injured. The next day, police at the University of Pittsburgh sent out a campus-wide alert informing students, faculty and staff that there was an “unconfirmed” report of an armed person at Pitt’s law school in Oakland. The alert was canceled 20 minutes later. Police had determined there was no shooter. In the coming days, several other colleges and universities were also targeted with swatting – fabricated reports of an emergency, ...

Outlaw Iran keeps stonewalling UN inspections

Iran keeps behaving like an outlaw regime. Australia expelled Tehran’s ambassador last week based on intelligence that its government masterminded an attack on a synagogue in Melbourne and a kosher food company in Sydney. The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog is receiving enhanced security because of what he calls a threat “from the direction” of Iran. Last Sunday, the Iran-backed Houthis raided the offices of the World Food Program, World Health Organization and UNICEF in Yemen’s capital. Two and a half months after the United States launched airstrikes against ...

Google offers Wikipedia tilt on cable news

While artificial intelligence may make the student research paper obsolete, if today a student does their own research and writing, it’s quite possible they will use Google to search their topic, and Google will invariably send the searcher to a Wikipedia article. If they were to write about cable news, the Wikipedia results are as biased as ... well, cable news. Their entries on Fox News Channel and Newsmax are remarkably different from the ones on CNN and MSNBC. Right away, in the second sentence, Wikipedia tells us Newsmax “has been variously described as conservative, ...

Audrey Jean Michael

Audrey Jean Michael was born in Belleville on May 20, 1934 and passed on to Heaven on Sept. 1, 2025. She was 91 years old. She was the daughter of the late William W. and Margaret R. (Russler) Miller. She is survived by her children, Debra Goddard, Cindra Mirales, Patricia McKnight and ...