rich9.con

rich9.con TikTok loses court bid to stop US ban. Supreme Court appeal is expectedA completed wetland mitigation project in Calhoun County. (Photo courtesy of Iowa Agricultural Mitigation) Iowa Agricultural Mitigation Inc. is restoring wetlands in Iowa and offsetting the costs by selling the credits back to farmers who farm wetland acres on their farms. Recently the nonprofit was awarded just under $1 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to restore 75 acres of wetland in Wright County as part of the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Wetland Mitigation Banking Program. Eric Rector, the Wright County Conservation Board director, said he wanted to start a water quality project in his county because he doesn’t think “the needle is moving very fast on those statewide.” According to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources , 11% of Iowa’s surface area was wetland prior to European settlement of the state. Since then, 95% of wetlands have been drained in the state, and a recent study from the Union of Concerned Scientists reported Iowa has 640,000 acres of wetlands. The same report found that wetlands in Iowa alone could mitigate $477 million worth of flood damage to residential areas, if the ecological systems are protected from agricultural practices that drain, fill or divert water from the wetlands. The project in Wright County would restore 75 acres of wetlands and stock the Iowa Agricultural Mitigation bank with wetland credits for farmers to purchase and offset affected wetlands on their properties. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Kevin Griggs, the program manager for Iowa Agricultural Mitigation , has been part of the project since its inception in 2010. Griggs said the nonprofit was founded with a mission to restore wetlands in Iowa and generate mitigation credits for farmers at a low cost. A wetland conservation provision of the 1985 Farm Bill, commonly called “ swampbuster ” discourages agricultural production on wetlands by restricting a farmer’s ability to receive USDA benefits if they engage in any activities that alter the wetland. Farmers who have drained or altered wetlands on their property to create more productive farmland can purchase credits from the wetland mitigation bank, acre-for-acre, to stay in compliance with swampbuster. “They’re able to solve an important issue that they’ve got in their farming operation by simply writing a check and filling out a form,” Griggs said. Farmers always have the option to restore wetlands on their own property, but Griggs said the farmed and tilled acres are usually “low quality” wetlands. Union of Concerned Scientists pushes for wetland protections in Farm Bill “Our intent all along was, well, maybe it’s okay to replace those low quality wetlands with high quality wetlands someplace else,” Griggs said. Griggs looks for areas that could result in a more substantial wetland. Most of the time, that’s in north central Iowa, also known as the Des Moines lobe, where the majority of tile drainage occurs in the state. “That’s the most common place to find the need for mitigation credits, so appropriately, that is where most of our mitigation sites are located,” Griggs said. The mitigation bank aims to restore wetlands that are in the same watershed as the farmers who are buying the mitigation credits, but has accommodated some credit-purchasers who aren’t directly in the same watershed. “Until we have established mitigation sites in multiple watersheds across the state, (NRCS) are allowing us to mitigate wetlands from other places, at the existing sites,” Griggs said. A spokesperson for NRCS said in a statement landowners “play an important role in restoring and protecting wetland health on working agricultural lands” and wetland mitigation banking “provides an alternative option to agricultural producers looking to compensate for impacts to wetlands on their lands.” To generate a mitigation credit, a wetland site has to be improved. For example, Griggs explained an easy project would be to take a historically wet field and remove or plug any drainage systems installed by a farmer in order to “restore the natural hydrologic regime of that landscape.” Other projects are more intensive and require some construction to restore the landscape and seed native wetland plants. Landowners are paid for a permanent easement, meaning once the wetland is established, “it has to remain wetland forever.” He said most of the landowners the bank works with are looking for a way to restore their land and have been happy to work with the mitigation bank program. The payments farmers make for the credits go straight to the next mitigation project, which is why Griggs said they decided to run the organization as a nonprofit. “The fear was that if it was run as a commercial operation, that the credit prices would deter people from using the program,” Griggs said. “So the goal of the project is to keep our credit prices as low as we can so that we get more people to participate.” To date, Griggs said the mitigation bank has over 10 “bank sites” or restored wetlands, and has sold credits to more than 300 farmers in Iowa. Iowa Agricultural Mitigation was recently a partner in a large project with the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship to close the last remaining agricultural drainage wells , and redirect drainage to a restored wetland site. Griggs said the organization provided most of the construction costs for the restored wetland and in return will sell the mitigation credits. “And that just continues to perpetuate the ability that we have to find the next site and produce more credits and restore more wetlands,” Griggs said. Iowa Agricultural Mitigation has made use of several grants from USDA. The nonprofit was the only Iowa project in the recent $7 million allocation from the department. Other winning projects were in Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois and Wisconsin. Griggs said the goal of the project is to restore wetland in an area between Lake Cornelia and Elm Lake in Wright County. A goal is to eventually include a connection to Elm Lake, which is on the Department of Natural Resources’ list of impaired waters for high algal growth and turbidity . “So that’s exciting for us in a number of ways, because we can see another big water quality success story,” Griggs said. Rector, in Wright County, said the project is just beginning. As of early December, he did not have commitments from landowners for the proposed 75-acre site which is currently used as crop land. “We can expand a little bit and move out away from this area, as long as it provides the same type of results or more,” Rector said regarding the potential of landowners who are unwilling to sell for the project. Rector said the wetland restoration project would “kill a lot of birds with a few stones” because it would give Iowans another area for outdoor recreation in the county and help improve the quality of the lakes, which prior to recent conservation efforts, weren’t “worth a darn” for fishing. Rector said he hopes folks in his county will see the importance of projects like this that will improve water quality issues. “Instead of hanging back and letting everybody else do it, let’s take a proactive approach instead of reactive approach,” Rector said. “Our water is polluted with nitrogen and chemicals, and our soil is blowing away every year, and we need to do something about it now, instead of later.” SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE

By KEVIN FREKING WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans teed up a vote this week on bipartisan legislation to gradually expand by 66 the number of federal judgeships across the country. Democrats, though, are having second thoughts now that President-elect Donald Trump has won a second term. The White House said Tuesday that if President Joe Biden were presented with the bill, he would veto it. A Congress closely divided along party lines would be unlikely to overturn a veto, likely dooming the bill’s chances this year. It’s an abrupt reversal for legislation that the Senate passed unanimously in August. But the GOP-led House waited until after the election to act on the measure, which spreads out the establishment of the new district judgeships over about a decade to give three presidential administrations the chance to appoint the new judges. Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., said the bill was negotiated with the understanding that three unknown, future presidents would have the chance to expand and shape the judiciary. No party would be knowingly given an advantage. He said he begged GOP leadership to take up the measure before the presidential election. But they did not do so. “It was a fair fight and they wanted no part of it,” Nadler said. Rep. Jim Jordan, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, explained the timing this way: “We just didn’t get to the legislation.” The change of heart about the bill from some Democrats and the new urgency from House Republicans for considering it underscores the contentious politics that surrounded federal judicial vacancies. Senate roll-call votes are required for almost every judicial nominee these days, and most votes for the Supreme Court and appellate courts are now decided largely along party lines. Lawmakers are generally hesitant to hand presidents from the opposing party new opportunities to shape the judiciary. Related Articles National Politics | Trump lawyers and aide hit with 10 additional felony charges in Wisconsin over 2020 fake electors National Politics | After withdrawing as attorney general nominee, Matt Gaetz lands a talk show on OANN television National Politics | What will happen to Social Security under Trump’s tax plan? National Politics | Republican-led states are rolling out plans that could aid Trump’s mass deportation effort National Politics | Trump promises to end birthright citizenship: What is it and could he do it? Nadler said that the bill would give Trump 25 judicial nominations on top of the 100-plus spots that are expected to open up over the next four years. “Donald Trump has made clear that he intends to expand the power of the presidency and giving him 25 new judges to appoint gives him one more tool at his disposal to do that,” Nadler said. Nadler said he’s willing to take up comparable legislation in the years ahead and give the additional judicial appointments to “unknown presidents yet to come,” but until then, he was urging colleagues to vote against the bill. Still, few are arguing against the merits. Congress last authorized a new district judgeship more than 20 years ago, while the number of cases being filed continues to increase with litigants often waiting years for a resolution. “I used to be a federal court litigator, and I can tell you it’s desperately needed,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said of the bill. Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., first introduced the bill to establish new judgeships in 2020. Last year, the policy-making body for the federal court system, the Judicial Conference of the United States, recommended the creation of several new district and court of appeals judgeships to meet increased workload demands in certain courts. “Judges work tirelessly every day to meet growing demands and resolve cases as quickly as possible, but with the volume we have and the shortage of judges we have, it just makes it a very difficult proposition,” Judge Timothy Corrigan, of the Middle District of Florida, said in a recent blog post on the website of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. The blog post states that caseloads are creating delays that will erode public confidence in the judicial process, but the bill would meet many of the federal judiciary’s needs for more judges. Jordan said that as of June 30th, there were nearly 750,000 pending cases in federal district courts nationwide, with each judge handling an average of 554 filings. When asked if House Republicans would have brought the bill up if Vice President Kamala Harris had won the election, Jordan said the bill is “the right thing to do” and that almost half of the first batch of judges will come from states where both senators are Democrats, giving them a chance to provide input on those nominations before Trump makes them. But in its veto threat, the White House Office of Management and Budget said the bill would create new judgeships in states where senators have sought to hold open existing judicial vacancies. “These efforts to hold open vacancies suggest that concerns about judicial economy and caseload are not the true motivating force behind passage of the law,” the White House said. Shortly before the White House issued the veto threat, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he would be curious to hear Biden’s rationale for such action. “It’s almost inconceivable that a lame-duck president could consider vetoing such an obviously prudential step for any reason other than selfish spite,” McConnell said.None

No. 25 Illinois rebounds in big way, blasts UMES 87-40

Recovering rare earth metals from waste permanent magnetsGlancy Prongay & Murray LLP Reminds Investors of Looming Deadline in the Class Action Lawsuit Against Rentokil Initial plc (RTO)

10-man Barcelona concedes two late goals in draw at Celta Vigo

PDP governors urge President Tinubu to reassess economic policies, affirms support for citizens

NEW YORK, Dec 10 (Reuters) - Alphabet (GOOGL.O) , opens new tab , the Google parent that has pioneered self-driving cars and quantum computing , is making its biggest bet much closer to home: online search. Applying artificial intelligence to the search business that made Google a household name remains the largest gambit for the company, Ruth Porat, Alphabet's president and chief investment officer, said at the Reuters NEXT conference in New York on Tuesday. "We're meeting people where they want to be next," said Porat, in an interview with Reuters Editor-in-Chief Alessandra Galloni. Alphabet, which makes much of its over $300 billion in annual revenue from search-related advertising, has injected AI-generated overviews to queries with no obvious answer, in one example of its efforts. The move followed competition from ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and has required Google to navigate tricky terrain, in which AI sometimes makes up information in what are called "hallucinations." Sign up here. Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler and Rosalba O'Brien Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. , opens new tab Thomson Reuters Jeffrey Dastin is a correspondent for Reuters based in San Francisco, where he reports on the technology industry and artificial intelligence. He joined Reuters in 2014, originally writing about airlines and travel from the New York bureau. Dastin graduated from Yale University with a degree in history.He was part of a team that examined lobbying by Amazon.com around the world, for which he won a SOPA Award in 2022.

Javier Hasse was recognized as Cannabis Journalist of the Year at The Emjays International Cannabis Awards 2024 in Las Vegas on Thursday. The event is part of MJBizCon ‘s annual conference, now in its 13th year. For the second year, nominees for each of the 26 categories were based on voting by the public while a panel of industry leaders helped select winners of The Emjays . Javier Hasse Hasse, who is head of content for Benzinga Cannabis and CEO of Spanish-language news site El Planteo , has brought about significant strides in the cannabis industry and culture. His dedication to reporting on cannabis, hemp, CBD and psychedelics is expressed in over 5,000 articles published across major outlets like Benzinga, CNN, CNBC, Rolling Stone and Forbes. “Javier’s writing about all aspects of cannabis consistently underscores the importance and growing acceptance of marijuana throughout the continent,” said Maureen Meehan one of Hasse’s colleagues at Benzinga Cannabis. “Both culturally and politically, the positive evolution of cannabis over these recent years is due in part to Javier’s insightful journalistic work.” Hasse authored the best-selling book, " Start Your Own Cannabis Business ," and co-authored “A Guide to Medical Cannabis: Your Roadmap to Understanding and Using Cannabis and CBD for Health , “ with Benzinga staff writer Nicolás Rodriguez . The latter was published on November 5, 2024 by Sheldon Press. A senior contributor to Forbes and member of the Rolling Stone Culture Council , Hasse was recently included in the High Times 100 list, highlighting his influence and dedication to the cannabis community. Hasse joined Josh Kesselman , CEO of RAW Rolling Papers in one of the many presentations at MJBizCon where their topic was “Embracing Your Brand’s Unique Magic,” in which they discussed innovative branding strategies for the cannabis ancillary market. Hasse shared his expertise in shaping media narratives, offering valuable insights to entrepreneurs aiming to build iconic and authentic brands. Other Honorees At The Emjays Awards 2024 Other industry figures were recognized with Emjays International Cannabis Awards include: Business Service of the Year: Sapphire Risk Advisory Group Financial Services of the Year: Green Check Verified Business Software of the Year: KayaPush Law Firm of the Year: Vicente Retail Cannabis Brand of the Year: Zamnesia Retail Services of the Year: Temeka Group Retail Software/Tech Company of the Year: Cova PR Agency of the Year: Grasslands Marketing Agency of the Year: PufCreativ Content Creator of the Year: Sara Payan, Planted With Sara Cultivation Technology (Hardware) of the Year: Fluence Testing Lab of the Year: SC Labs Cultivation Software of the Year: TSRgrow, GrowHub Packaging/Printing Company of the Year: Gold Leaf Print & Packaging Cultivation (Non-tech) Company of the Year: Royal Queen Seeds Cannabis Infused Brand of the Year: Wyld Extraction/Concentrate Brand of the Year: The Clear Cannabis (Flower) Brand of the Year: American Weed Co. CBD/Hemp Brand of the Year: Chime & Chill Consumer Gear/Tech Product of the Year: Boveda Vaporizer Product of the Year: Venty, by Storz & Bickel Advocacy Organization of the Year: Last Prisoner Project Best Packaging Design: Jeeter x Marley Best Marketing Campaign or Collaboration of the Year: DaySavers Stoner Dream Job Best Newcomer Brand: 55Plus The Emjays event is produced by Farechild Events in association with MJBizCon. Read more here . Read Next: ‘Oregonians Have High Standards When It Comes To Their Weed’ Says Mike Tyson, As Products Launch Throughout State © 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.