Wayne Byers Show – Evening – Dec. 7

CSi Weather…

.TONIGHT…Partly cloudy. Lows zero to 5 above. Southwest winds around 5 mph.

.WEDNESDAY…Partly sunny. Highs in the upper 20s. Southeast winds 5 to 15 mph shifting to the south 15 to 20 mph in the afternoon.

.WEDNESDAY NIGHT…Mostly cloudy. Not as cold. Lows in the lower

20s. South winds 10 to 15 mph. Gusts up to 30 mph in the evening.

.THURSDAY…Mostly sunny. Highs in the mid 30s. West winds 10 to

15 mph.

.THURSDAY NIGHT…Increasing clouds. Lows around 15.

.FRIDAY…Mostly cloudy. Highs in the upper 20s.

.FRIDAY NIGHT…Mostly cloudy in the evening then clearing. Lows

around 10.

.SATURDAY…Sunny. Highs in the lower 30s.

.SATURDAY NIGHT…Partly cloudy. Lows in the lower 20s.

.SUNDAY…Mostly sunny. Highs in the upper 30s.

.SUNDAY NIGHT…Partly cloudy. Lows in the lower 20s.

.MONDAY…Mostly sunny. Highs in the upper 30s.

 

The North Dakota Department of Health dashboard is updated daily by 11 am and includes cases reported through the previous day. The investigations are ongoing and information on the website is likely to change as cases are investigated. The information contained in this dashboard is the most up to date and will be different than previous news releases. This dashboard supersedes information from previous news releases or social media postings.

Check out our other dashboards: The COVID-19 Vaccine Dashboard, NDUS Dashboard.COVID- 19 stats:

 

COVID-19 Stats

Tues. Dec. 7,  2021

10:25 -a.m.

Barnes

New Positives:  12

Total Positives: 2109

Active: 43

Recovered:  3023

Breakthrough Incidents Per 10K Fully Vaccinated Individuals: 359

 

Stutsman

New Positives: 10

Total Positives: 4970

Active: 96

Recovered: 4759

Breakthrough Incidents Per 10K Fully Vaccinated Individuals: 415

North Dakota as of Dec. 7, 2021

NEW CASES REPORTED: 565

ACTIVE CASES: 2,991

DAILY POSITIVITY RATE: 8.5%

TOTAL KNOWN CASES THROUGHOUT PANDEMIC: 165,375

TOTAL RECOVERED THROUGHOUT PANDEMIC: 160,456

 

ACTIVE HOSPITALIZATIONS: 162

DEATHS: 13

TOTAL DEATHS: 1,928

 

 

 

 

Jamestown  (CVHD)  Central Valley Health District reminds residents that COVID testing is  on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, at the Jamestown Civic Center, Exchequor Room, from 11-a.m. to 1-pm.

Call CVHD at 701-252-8130 to register.

 

 

 

 

Valley City (CCHD)  City County Health in Valley City announces their COVID-19 testing days and site location in Valley City.

Testing is at the REC Center at 140 4th Street Southwest.

Testing will be 12:30-2:30 Mon, Weds, and Fridays.

There are opportunities for vaccinations, both for annual influenza and for the COVID vaccine.  Call 845-8518 to make an appointment.

 

 

 

 

 

Valley City  (VCPS) – Valley City Public Schools will be dismissing all students K-12 early from school early on Wednesday, December 8.

Superintendent Josh Johnson said the early dismissal will allow all staff at VCPS the ability to attend professional development that is timely, relevant, and aligned with our purpose and commitments in the district.

Dismissal Schedule:
Elementary K-6 (12:10pm)
Junior High 7-8 (12:25pm)
Senior High 9-12 (11:56am) Students in grades 9-12 may stay for lunch between 11:56-12:25pm.

Lunch on the Early Dismissals Days:
All students will be provided the opportunity for lunch on the days of an early dismissal. Principals may adjust lunch
schedules on the day of early dismissals to allow all students the opportunity to have time to eat lunch.

Busing on the Early Dismissal Days:
Dietrich Bus Service will provide all bus students with bus transportation on early dismissal days. The early dismissal bus
schedule (including school pick-up and drop-off times) will closely follow the regular school day bus schedule with the only
change being the time moves everything up 3 hours on the schedule).

Activity Schedules on Early Dismissal Days
All VCPS sponsored activities (including practices) will not begin prior to 4:00pm on early dismissal days during the 2021-
2022 school year.

 

Valley City  (CSi)  The Valley City Commission met in Regular Session Tuesday evening at City Hall.  All members were present.

APPROVAL OF CONSENT AGENDA

Monthly Reports from the Fire Chief, Electrical Superintendent, Building Inspector Finance Director and Municipal Judge.

The 2022 Tree Trimming and Removal License Renewals for:

1. Johnny B’s Trees & Service
2. Z’s Trees
3. Mikes Construction and Repair
4. Ross’ Tree Services

 

Approved was a 2022 Vehicles for Hire License Renewal for South Central Adult Services.

 

PUBLIC COMMENTS:  No One Spoke

 

ORDINANCE

Moved to next meeting was …

The Second and Final Reading of Ordinance 1091, an Ordinance approving changes to the official Zoning Map of the City.  

 

RESOLUTION

Approved a Resolution from the Valley City Board of City Commissioners Authorizing the President of the Board of Commissioners to execute the deed in favor of the State of North Dakota.   City Engineer Chad Peterson said the property is on West Main Street.  The NDDOT is proposing to purchase the parcels for easements from Valley City for state projects.  The permanent  and temporary acquisitions will be for just over $20,800 in the purchase price.

NEW BUSINESS

Approved Monthly Bills for the City and Public Works in the Amount of $1,454,534.55.

Approved the VCBCDC Request for a Sales Price per Acre of $25,000 for four acres, for City-owned land between Drug Plastics & Glass and the NW Industrial Park Building. Development Director, Jennifer Feist said the acres are  on the north side of the rail spur.

Approved the Town and Country Club Map Revision Contingent on Approval from the State. The building manger explained the changes to the facility.

 

CITY ADMINISTRATOR’S REPORT HIGHLIGHTS

Gwen Crawford thanked city employees for the new lighting installations.

She said new stop sign placements will be studied, with the placements to be announced.

 CITY UPDATES &COMMISSION REPORTS

Fire Chief Scott Magnuson said divers have been training in cold water.

He outlined fire prevention tips for the Christmas holiday including not overloading extension cords, and outlets.

Commissioner Gulmon reviewed the financial reports. He said a  32 percent increase was noted in the city sales tax, a portion goes to property tax relief. A 40 percent increase was noted in the food and beverage tax.

He said the healthcare system remains stressed, due to a shortage of staff.

Commissioner Bishop thanked Valley City Police, as Bishop shared a story of an individual who was pulled over, and explained the officer was very courteous.

Mayor Carlsrud reminded the community that December 7 was Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.  He urged residents to thank a service person and veteran for their service.  He said anyone wanting more information on the Pearl Harbor attack to go on line to Google.

The meeting was shown live on CSi Cable 68 followed by replays.

 

 

Jamestown  (CSi)  The year 2021 saw an increase in tourism in Jamestown.

On Tuesday’s Wayne Byers Show on CSi Cable 2 Tourism Director, Searle Swedlund said compared to the pre-COVID-19 year, 2019, the 2021 tourism numbers increased by about 20-percent, as measured by road traffic.

He added that starting  in 2021 Frontier Village visitor numbers rose, noting that a recent survey, fill out by visitors, is being compiled with the results to be released later.

Searle said that this year, branding of Frontier Village was being reworked, to update the Village’s identity, along with a logo.

He pointed out a number of contributions continues including from the Jamestown Kiwanis Club and Jamestown Eagles contribution of the Frontier Village Railroad Parkette.   He said there has been a delay in the arrival of some of materials, due to shipping lags.

Looking forward to 2022, Searle said, tourism is looking for continued growth, in promoting Jamestown has a visitor experience, including the creation of the Bison World Cultural Attraction.

FARGO, N.D. (AP) — A Fargo woman has been sentenced to 30 years in prison in the death of a 1-year-old child left in her care. A Cass County District Court judge imposed the sentence Monday for 38-year-old Brandi Adeleke who earlier pleaded guilty to murder and child abuse. Meka Ducheneaux died in November 2020 from what doctors said was blunt force trauma. Adeleke claimed that she had left the child alone in the bathtub and found her unresponsive. The prosecution and defense reached a joint recommendation on the sentence, which Judge Steven Marquart approved. Adeleke will be eligible for parole after serving 25 years.

In world and national news…

Amazon Web Services suffered a major outage Tuesday, the company said, disrupting access to many popular sites.

The company provides cloud computing services to many governments, universities and companies, including The Associated Press.

Amazon said in a post an hour after the outage began that it had identified the root cause and was “actively working towards recovery.” The issue primarily affected its services in the Eastern U.S., it said. It did not disclose any additional details about the cause.

Amazon later updated the dashboard to note that the company was “starting to see some signs of recovery. We do not have an ETA for full recovery at this time.

″The outage also affected Amazon’s ability to provide status updates, it said.

Problems began midmorning on the U.S. East Coast, said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik Inc, a network intelligence firm. “AWS is the biggest cloud provider and us-east-1 is their biggest data center, so any disruption there has big impacts to many popular websites and other internet services,” he said.

Madory said he did not believe the outage was anything nefarious. He said a recent cluster of outages at providers that host major websites reflects how the networking industry has evolved. “More and more these outages end up being the product of automation and centralization of administration,” he said. “This ends up leading to outages that are hard to completely avoid due to operational complexity but are very impactful when they happen.”

Kentik was seeing a 26% drop in traffic to Netflix, among major web-based services affected by the outage, Madory said.

Customers trying to book or change trips with Delta Air Lines were having trouble connecting to the airline. “Delta is working quickly to restore functionality to our AWS-supported phone lines,” said spokesperson Morgan Durrant. The airline apologized and encouraged customers to use its website or mobile app instead.

According to DownDetector, a clearinghouse for user reports of outages, Southwest was also affected, but not American, United, Alaska or JetBlue. People trying to use Instacart, Venmo, Kindle, Roku, and Disney+ have reported issues. The McDonald’s app was also down.

Toyota spokesperson Scott Vazin said the company’s U.S. East Region for dealer services went down. The company has apps that process dealer warranty claims and other services, and over 20 apps were affected.

It wasn’t immediately clear how, or whether, the outage was affecting the federal government. The White House referred questions to the nation’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a component of the Department of Homeland Security, which directed queries to Amazon.

 

A federal judge on Tuesday blocked President Joe Biden’s administration from enforcing a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for employees of federal contractors, the latest in a string of victories for Republican-led states pushing back against Biden’s pandemic policies.

U.S. District Judge R. Stan Baker, in Augusta, Georgia, issued a stay to bar enforcement of the mandate nationwide.

The order came in response to a lawsuit from several contractors and seven states — Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia. It applies across the U.S. because one of those challenging the order is the trade group Associated Builders and Contractors Inc., whose members do business nationwide.

Baker found that the states are likely to succeed in their claim that Biden exceeded authorization from Congress when he issued the requirement in September.

LONDON (AP) — One of the scientists behind the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine is warning that the next pandemic may be more contagious and more lethal unless more money is devoted to research and preparations to fight emerging viral threats.

In excerpts released before a speech Monday, Professor Sarah Gilbert says the scientific advances made in fighting deadly viruses “must not be lost” because of the cost of fighting the current pandemic.

“This will not be the last time a virus threatens our lives and our livelihoods,” Gilbert is expected to say. “The truth is, the next one could be worse. It could be more contagious, or more lethal, or both.”

Gilbert will be speaking Monday night when she delivers this year’s Richard Dimbleby lecture, named after the late broadcaster who was the BBC’s first war correspondent and a pioneer of television news in Britain. The annual televised lecture features addresses by influential figures in business, science and government.

CHICAGO (AP) – Jussie Smollett on Tuesday repeatedly denied he staged a racist, anti-gay attack on himself for publicity, telling a prosecutor as the trial neared its end that “there was no hoax on my part” and that two brothers who testified against him are “liars.”

Lawyers for the former “Empire” actor rested their case shortly after Smollett finished a second day of testimony at the Chicago courthouse on charges he lied to police about the January 2019 attack. Prosecutors said they had no other witnesses to call, and Judge James Linn scheduled closing arguments for Wednesday.

On Monday, Smollett called the Osundairo brothers’ testimony that he paid them $3,500 to carry out the fake attack “100% false,” and described how he was the victim of a hate crime while walking in his downtown Chicago neighborhood. He also testified that the $3,500 check to Abimbola Osundairo was for meal and workout plans because he was trying to get toned for an upcoming music video.

Under cross-examination by special prosecutor Dan Webb, Smollett said Tuesday that a few days before the alleged attack he picked up Abimbola Osundairo in his car to go workout and that Osundairo’s brother, Olabingo Osundairo, came along. Smollett denied the brothers’ earlier testimony that they drove around together – circling the area where the alleged attack occurred three times – as part of a “dry run” for the fake assault. He said circling the area was not unusual behavior for him, and that he called off the plan to work out because he didn’t want to work out with Olabingo Osundairo, whom he hadn’t invited along.

Smollett, who was calm throughout hours of testimony with his defense attorney Monday, seemed to grow more irritated during his exchanges with Webb on Tuesday, at one point telling the veteran prosecutor he doesn’t understand the social media app Instagram. Webb’s cross-examination also revealed some inconsistencies in Smollett’s testimony, including about whether he sent private messages to confirm the timing of the alleged attack and whether his attackers were white, as police say Smollett told them.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden on Tuesday marked the 80th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor with a somber visit to the World War II Memorial in the nation’s capital.

The Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor and other locations in Hawaii killed 2,403 service members and civilians and was a defining moment that led to U.S. entry into World War II.

Joe Biden touched a wreath and saluted. The wreath contained a wild sunflower, the state flower of Kansas, in honor of former Sen. Bob Dole, a war veteran who was a driving force in getting the memorial built on the National Mall and who died Sunday at age 98.

The first lady laid a bouquet of flowers at the base of the memorial below the New Jersey pillar and softly touched a wall, where she and the president spent a moment. The bouquet was in honor of her father, Donald Jacobs, who served as a U.S. Navy signalman in the war, the White House said.

The Bidens then paused at the Pacific arch on the southern side of the memorial plaza for one last moment of reflection before departing.

Joe Biden, in a White House proclamation issued last week to recognize National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, gave “thanks to the Greatest Generation, who guided our Nation through some of our darkest moments and laid the foundations of an international system that has transformed former adversaries into allies.”