ROCK ISLAND, ILLINOIS (April 22, 2020) — On the eve of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, Augustana College President Steven Bahls is announcing early plans to place solar panels on four campus buildings.

Once fully-installed, solar power will provide about 8% of the college’s annual electric energy-needs.

Solar units will be added to the rooftops of four buildings:

WASHINGTON DC (April 22, 2020) — The US Food and Drug Administration has authorized the first diagnostic test with a home collection option for COVID-19. Specifically, the FDA re-issued the emergency use authorization (EUA) for the Laboratory Corporation of America (LabCorp) COVID-19 RT-PCR Test to permit testing of samples self-collected by patients at home using LabCorp’s Pixel by LabCorp COVID-19 Test home collection kit.

BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA (April 22, 2020) — The following people recently have been initiated into The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, the nation's oldest and most-selective collegiate honor-society for all academic disciplines.

Zachary Bunn of Bettendorf (52722) at United States Military Academy

Lauren Bell of Rock Island (61201) at Bradley University

Megan Griffin of Milan (61264) at Methodist College

Allie Hoffman of Moline (61265) at Bradley University

“They were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don't recognize them for what they are until it's too late.” — Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

ROCK ISLAND, ILLINOIS (April 22, 2020) — A Care-A-Van decorated with messages of thanks to all their health-care workers and essential personnel from Buddhists, Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Humanists will make its way to four nursing homes on the Illinois side of the River.

WASHINGTON DC (April 22, 2020) — The national debt has grown by more than $1 trillion over the past month, from $17.5 trillion on March 17th to $18.5 trillion on April 17th. Debt held by the public rose $293 billion in the last week alone. Below is a statement from Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:

"We entered the current Coronavirus crisis borrowing $1 trillion per year, but never thought we would be borrowing $1 trillion per month.

The precautionary principle, per Wikipedia, is "a strategy for approaching issues of potential harm when extensive scientific knowledge on the matter is lacking. It emphasizes caution, pausing, and review before leaping into new innovations that may prove disastrous."

DES MOINES, IOWA (April 22, 2020) — On April 21, Governor Kim Reynolds launched the Test Iowa Initiative to expand testing capacity to limit the spread of COVID-19 in Iowa. The state is partnering with Nomi Health and its subsidiary DOMO which has already launched a similar initiative in the state of Utah.

DES MOINES, IOWA (April 22, 2020) — The Iowa Environmental Council, the state’s largest non-profit environmental coalition, today released the publication of Iowa’s Road to 100% Renewable — an analysis of the renewable energy growth needed to reach 100% renewable electricity in Iowa by 2050.

DES MOINES, IOWA (April 22, 2020) — The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) Research Center released a 

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