It’s open. Final thoughts:
* EAT YOUR VEGETABLES: Walmart joined some other retailers today in an initiative urged by First Lady Obama to take its stores into “food deserts,” places where people currently live long distances from stores with fresh fruits and vegetables and other healthy eating options. By the end of 2016, the chain says it will have 500 stores in areas the USDA designates as “food deserts.”
* TARGET PRACTICE FOR CREDIT: Thanks to Paragould Daily Press for this report on innovations in education. Greene County Tech is seeking approval for building a shooting range next to a landfill. The crux of safety questions appears to be not about guns but about lead that might leach into runoff water.
* YARNELL’S RESPONDS: Yarnell’s Premium Ice Cream, facing a suit by laid-off workers that they are owed 60 days’ pay for the company’s failure to give advance notice of their layoffs when the Searcy company shut down, has provided a response to the lawsuit:
We are aware that an employee has filed a lawsuit complaining that Yarnell’s did not provide adequate notice under law. While Yarnell’s generally does not comment on ongoing litigation, Yarnell’s does deny the allegations. As explained to the employees at the time, Yarnell’s provided as much notice as was reasonably possible under the trying business circumstances the Company faced.
The company is apparently arguing that its failing condition gave it an exemption from the federal WARN Act requirement for 60 days notice of mass layoffs.