Also on today’s menu:
Independent Meatpackers May Save The Day
5G Delayed In The Interest Of Aviation Safety
Two occupants of a pickup truck who had been ejected when the vehicle crashed on Interstate 89 owe their lives to Tinsley, a German shepherd who led Lebanon police officers and a New Hampshire state trooper to the scene of the crash.
According to Union Leader correspondent Meghan Pierce, police were called out to a report of a loose canine on Veterans’ Memorial Bridge on the New Hampshire-Vermont border around 10 p.m. on January 3. The dog was running in the roadway and people were trying to catch it. When police arrived, the dog turned and led them across the bridge into Vermont, where they found the crash and the ejected occupants who were hypothermic and seriously injured.
Tinsley belonged to one of the injured people, and Vermont State Police who arrived to handle the crash investigation said there apparently had been another dog that escaped from the vehicle but was unknown. Tinsley did not appear to be injured. The driver, Cameron Laundary, 31, of North Hartland, Vermont, was treated at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon. There was no information about the condition of the 40-year-old male passenger in the truck.
Independent Meatpackers May Save The Day
President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan is investing $1 billion in the support of independent meatpackers in an effort to decrease rising meat prices. Farmers and ranchers have complained that they are often at the mercy of just a few buyers who determine the price they receive, and that, although the conglomerates are able to raise prices at the grocery stores, they push down prices for farmers and ranchers and hurt consumers.
A small handful of companies control the majority of the markets for beef, pork, and poultry. Four large meatpacking companies control 85 percent of the beef market. In poultry, the top four processing firms control 54 percent of the market. The top four processing firms control about 70 percent of the pork market.
The Biden plan aims to expand and diversify meat and poultry processing capacity, increase producer income, provide an opportunity for producers to have ownership in processing facilities, create stable, well-paying jobs in rural regions, raise the bar on worker health, safety, training, and wages for meatpacking jobs, spur collaboration among producers and workers, prompt state, tribal, and private co-investment, and provide consumers with more choices.
5G Delayed In The Interest Of Aviation Safety
Verizon, AT&T, and the Federal Communications Commission have reached an agreement with the Department of Transportation in an effort to address the concerns of the Federal Aviation Administration and the airline industry over the two carrier’s plans to upgrade their 5G wireless services.
The companies delayed the launch of the “C-band” spectrum for two more weeks, after having already postponed the change for a month, over “concerns that the 5G signal could interfere with the accuracy of an airplane’s radio altimeter, without other mitigations in place,” according to the FAA.
The companies agreed to use mitigations similar to those used in France, creating a buffer zone around certain airports and lowering power levels nationwide around 50 airports. Verizon and AT&T say use of the C-band will provide in-between performance over much wider areas than the ultra-fast 5G connectivity available in specific areas that use high-band millimeter-wave technology and much slower 5G over low-band frequencies.
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