Al’s, a sporting-goods store tucked in Wilmington, Delaware’s small shopping district, opened during the Great Depression, weathered World War II and has been able to keep workers on the job during the coronavirus pandemic. But this past weekend delivered a new challenge.

Owner Bob Hart closed the 17,000-square-foot shop at 4 p.m. Saturday as protesters walked Market Street, blocks away. A few hours later, around 8:15 p.m., the first of the store alarms went off. Looters who followed the peaceful demonstrations broke windows at the store and stole the majority of Hart’s inventory, including about 10,000 pairs of shoes.

California regulators approved PG&E Corp.’s $58 billion reorganization plan, bringing the power giant another step closer to exiting the biggest utility bankruptcy in U.S. history.

The state’s Public Utilities Commission unanimously voted in favor of PG&E’s proposal after the company agreed to revamp its board and governance structure, submit to greater regulatory oversight and create local operating units to ensure a greater focus on safety.

A huge fire that tore through a warehouse on San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf has destroyed fishing gear used to deliver about two-thirds of the city’s fresh seafood, threatening to disrupt the upcoming Dungeness crab season, local fishermen said Sunday.

The fire erupted before dawn Saturday and wiped out the warehouse the size of a football field near the end of Pier 45.

(TNS) - Facetime, Zoom, Google Meets — and ham radio.

Video conferencing may have come into prominence during the coronavirus pandemic as part of the effort to stay connected. But in contrast to the virtual online spaces where many convene, some central Ohioans are instead taking to the airwaves.

The Madison County Amateur Radio Club has expanded its weekly "nets" — a channel for multiple radios to use for communication — to almost every night, giving its members a space to entertain, educate and converse with each other. The radio club, made up of about 60 licensed amateur radio operators in Madison County and central Ohio, first expanded its "nets" in late March following Gov. Mike DeWine's initial stay-at-home order.

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PARMA Member Spot Light
Ask Larry Column
PARMA Annual Conference Save the Date
Calendar at a Glance
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(TNS) -- After TSA rolled out a series of new measures Thursday to encourage social distancing and stop the spread of COVID-19, Acting U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf said the agency is considering checking temperatures and thermal imaging to help screen for the virus.

Wolf, a Plano native who toured Alliance Airport in Fort Worth for a look at shipping infrastructure, said it is a possibility that passengers will be screened for elevated temperatures before they board planes.

As in 1918, New York may use staggered work hours to keep subway safe

As New York City makes plans to reopen in the coming months, officials are dusting off the playbook from the 1918 flu pandemic, when businesses were ordered to begin their work days at staggered times to prevent the subway from becoming a vector of disease.

(TNS) - As California hurries to reopen stores, offices, restaurants and more this week, another rush is on behind-the-scenes.

State health officials have launched an unprecedented effort to train thousands of front-line, county-level workers to act as a firewall to stop the coronavirus from roaring back this fall.
Gov. Gavin Newsom calls them his “army of disease detectives.”

Commonly known in the public health world as communicable-disease “contact tracers,” this ad hoc group will serve as community strike teams in each county, working on tight deadlines to stop individual infections from turning into major outbreaks.

A new report titled, “Strong Social Distancing Measures in the United States Reduced the COVID-19 Growth Rate” finds that steps taken to reduce the spread of corononavirus by state and local governments have had a major impact. The results imply that by April 27, the number of cases would have been 35 times higher without any of the measures — suggesting the U.S. would have reported 35 million (rather than 1 million) COVID-19 cases.

Authors of the new study — Charles Courtemanche and Aaron Yelowitz, both professors at the University of Kentucky’s Gatton College of Business and Economics; Anh Le, a doctoral student at University of Kentucky; Josh Pinston, a professor at the University of Louisville; and Joseph Garuccio, a doctoral student at Georgia State — evaluated measures taken by states and counties across the country.

More than two dozen California counties have asked for permission to loosen their stay-at-home orders beyond what the state allows, Gov. Gavin Newsom said, promising a speedy review of their requests as jobs continue disappearing by the millions in a coronavirus-induced economic downturn.

Newsom relaxed some statewide restrictions last week by allowing curbside pickup at most retail stores and giving manufacturers the OK to resume with some limits. He’s promised to release guidelines on Tuesday for the return of dine-in restaurants.