(DES MOINES) - Gov. Terry E. Branstad today signed the following three bills into law:

House File 397 is an Act defining occasional work for purposes of the state child labor law.

House File 585 is an Act establishing an address confidentiality program in the Office of the Secretary of State for a victim of domestic abuse, domestic abuse assault, sexual abuse, stalking, and human trafficking and providing for a fee and including effective date provisions.

House File 615 is an Act relating to the establishment, operation, and dissolution of rural improvement zones.

Scott County residents who would like to know more about gardening and share their knowledge with others are encouraged to sign up for the Master Gardener training course to be held September - November, 2015.  This program offers intensive horticulture training in exchange for volunteer service in the community.

The 2015 training program will be from 6:30 - 9:30 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  An additional Saturday session will be held on October 10th or 24th at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa.  This will offer lab sessions at the ISU plant disease and insect labs.  Cost for the program is $195.  More details and applications are available at the Scott County Extension Office, 875 Tanglefoot Lane, Bettendorf, Iowa, online at www.extension.iastate.edu/scott or by calling 563-359-7577. Applications are due July 31, 2015.

Master Gardeners provide information and education to the community on lawn care, trees, shrubs, insects, disease, weed control, soil and plant nutrition, vegetable and flower gardening, ornamentals and houseplants.

WASHINGTON, May 7, 2015 - The next World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report, which will be released at 12 noon ET on May 12, will present USDA's initial assessment of U.S. and world crop supply and demand prospects and U.S. prices for the 2015/16 marketing year. It will also present the first calendar-year 2016 projections of U.S. livestock, poultry, and dairy products.

The WASDE U.S. Wheat Supply and Use Table on page 11 and the U.S. Feed Grain and Corn Supply and Use Table on page 12 have been reformatted to delete "CCC Inventory, Free Stock and Outstanding Loans." The Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) grain inventories have been small to non-existent in recent years. The Outstanding Loans data are available from the Farm Service Agency website.

An example of the table changes on pages 11 and 12 are found on the following two sample WASDE pages.

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MOLINE, Ill. - Midwest Technical Institute is proud to announce seven Moline-area high school students as the winners of the 2014-2015 mrWF/MTI Scholarship Program.

This year's winners were determined by a public voting campaign via Facebook and include Jeff Farny, of Sterling High School; Colin Jones, of Mercer County High School; Daniel Reed, of Rock Island High School; Andrew Fitz, of Moline High School; Jace Jennings, of Kewanee High School; Madalyn Brown, of Moline High School; Logan Wheeler, of Louisa Muscatine High School.

Winners of this year's scholarship program will receive a 100 percent tuition-paid scholarship for any of MTI's courses and programs, including those in welding, HVAC, medical assisting, dental assisting, medical coding, CDL and others.

Founded in 2013 as a collaboration between MTI and Mike Rowe - best known as the host of the reality show 'Dirty Jobs' and CNN's 'Somebody's Gotta Do It' - the program is committed to assisting today's high school students in receiving the hands-on, workforce training necessary to help close the nationwide skills gap in a number of skilled-labor industries.

To be eligible for the program, students submitted a short essay and video detailing why they deserved to win one of this year's scholarships. Submitted videos were then subject to a period of public voting via MTI's Facebook profiles where the videos with the most votes were selected as winners.

MTI's Director of High School Development Eric Gleason believes the scholarship program offers winners more than just a free, skills-based education.

"The Mike Rowe scholarship gives winners a sense of accomplishment and pride, not to mention the recognition," Gleason said. "The effort these students put into this scholarship can give them the confidence to accomplish great things in their career and life."

A partnership between MTI and the mikeroweWORKS Foundation, the program awards seven students at each of MTI's five campus locations annually with a tuition-free scholarship. The program also works to promote the value of hands-on, vocational training for a number of in-demand mechanical trade, allied health and transportation industries.

For more information on MTI or the scholarship program, contact MTI Director of Marketing Stacey Wierman at (309) 427-2750, extension 1228, or via email at swierman@midwesttech.edu.

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