December Issue News Briefs

Local: $260,000 Grant to Improve Dickinson Park

The grant requires a 50/50 match, so the project will amount to $520,000. The project will not begin until 2025 and is expected to be completed by 2026. In June 2022 St. Joseph Public Schools received a $1 million donation to renovate the baseball and softball fields, but had to navigate the legality of the renovation as the city owns the park in a shared-use agreement. The city plans to work in accordance with the improvement project the district already had planned. The project is expected to include four family-style restrooms and a parking lot with about 30 spaces as well as improvements to the dugouts, press box, fencing and fields. The district projected their share of the project’s cost to amount to $1.5 million, and the donor increased their donation to that amount.

National: California Wildfires Created Cancer-Causing Chromium

After recent wildfires in Northern California, scientists ran tests on singed soil and discovered hexavalent chromium. This can cause anywhere from skin and eye irritation to nasal, sinus, and lung cancers. Scientists proposed the extreme heat from the wildfires transformed a non-toxic version of the metal into a carcinogen. This suggests that wildfires burning in natural areas could be releasing smoke containing toxic metal, and fires that are more intense for longer are more likely to turn benign soil into carcinogens. Additionally, climate change causes wildfires to be more frequent and severe, enhancing the risk. But, chromium is not the only harmful metal released in wildfires–lead, zinc, calcium, iron, and manganese pose a threat as well.

Global: Ukraine’s Top Mobile Operator Subject to Cyberattack

On December 12, a major cyberattack on a Ukrainian mobile operator disrupted air raid warnings and banking services. It damaged IT infrastructure and forced the company to temporarily shut down to prevent further damages. The company had 24.8 million customers at the end of 2022. In the northern region of Ukraine, air raid services experienced outages. Residents were informed that in the instance of an outage they will be notified by patrol police and the State Emergency Service. Ukraine’s Security Service is investigating whether Russian special services are behind the attack.