Patricia Wells

When it rains in West Texas, the flat desert around Odessa quickly turns into a soggy mess. Water pools on roads and sidewalks, causing flooding that locals have grown used to but don’t have an easy solution for. The damage is due to an outdated drainage system built back in the 1970s—one that simply can’t … Read more

Texas youth camps are stepping up safety measures this summer after tragic floods in July took the lives of 27 campers and counselors at Camp Mystic. Officials have mandated weather alert systems, emergency plans, and communication tools to keep kids safe. But many say more focus is needed on mental health support for campers and … Read more

Anthony Roofing Tecta America LLC and its parent company, Tecta America Corporation, are facing a federal lawsuit for allegedly subjecting employees at their Aurora, Illinois location to racial and sexual harassment. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) brought the case after reports that African American and female workers endured offensive and harmful treatment on … Read more

Tyson Foods’ plan to shut down its beef processing plant in Lexington, Nebraska, is hitting the small town hard. The plant employs about 3,200 people—nearly a third of the town’s population of 11,000. Slated to close in January, the shutdown threatens to shake the community’s economy and the wider beef industry. The Lexington plant can … Read more

A new report highlights a looming challenge for central Ohio: water demand is set to soar in the coming decades, with both industry and farming needing far more than before. This rise comes just as experts expect farmers will start irrigating their crops during summer’s driest months, a big change for a region that has … Read more

A deaf woman who applied for a delivery driver job with ALM Freight, an Amazon Delivery Service Partner in Pontiac, Michigan, says she was denied a key accommodation needed to start her work. According to a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the woman asked for an American Sign Language (ASL) … Read more

In September, a record number of home sellers in the US decided to pull their listings off the market. Nearly 85,000 sellers took their properties down, marking the highest figure for that month in eight years, according to data from Redfin. At the same time, homes that had been listed for 60 days or more—the … Read more

Glunt Industries, a machining company based in Warren, Ohio, has agreed to pay $2 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The federal agency accused the company of discriminating against women by not hiring them for production jobs since at least 2018 and failing to provide women’s restrooms … Read more

Meta stopped an internal study on Facebook’s impact on mental health after its own research showed the platform could harm users, according to court documents from a lawsuit filed by U.S. school districts. The documents reveal that in 2020, Meta ran a project called "Project Mercury" with the survey firm Nielsen. The study looked at … Read more

Two former investigators at Farm Bureau Financial Services have filed a lawsuit against the company, accusing it of fraud, racketeering, and wrongful termination. The lawsuit claims that the insurer’s management knew about illegal activities by employees but chose not to report them to state regulators. Instead, they allegedly shifted the financial burden of these fraudulent … Read more