Posts tagged with "Arizona"

Photo source: Halfday Tonics

Beverage startup aims to be ‘Snapple 2.0’

November 10, 2021

A debilitating digestive illness led to the launch of Halfday Tonics, a Philadelphia-based brand of canned tea beverages featuring prebiotic fiber. Founders Kayvon Jahanbakhsh and Michael Lombardo began developing the concept as college students several years ago following a severe bout of ulcerative colitis that hospitalized Jahanbakhsh for three months and sank his swim career, reports Food Business News.

Halfday was inspired by the pair’s favorite summertime refreshment, bottled or canned tea from such brands as Snapple, AriZona, and Brisk.

Jahanbakhsh eliminated these drinks from his diet to avoid flare-ups of his disease, which is triggered by high sugar intake, he said. The addition of inulin to homemade batches of iced tea aided his recovery and sparked the idea for the business.

“As I started to get better and better, I realized there’s a need for this,” he said.

An overwhelming majority of Americans fail to consume the recommended amount of dietary fiber per day. Many brands marketing digestive wellness typically target older shoppers, Jahanbakhsh said, citing Activia and Metamucil as examples.

Halfday was designed to appeal to Generation Z and millennials, who are more likely to seek lower-sugar beverages, Lombardo said.

The products are formulated with organic ingredients, including green or black tea extract, Jerusalem artichoke inulin, agave inulin, apple juice concentrate and lemon juice concentrate, plus stevia leaf extract. Varieties include peach green tea, lemon black tea and green tea with honey and ginseng. A seasonal flavor, cranberry black tea, is set to debut in November.

“There really hasn’t been iced tea innovation since Honest in the ‘90s and early 2000s,” Jahanbakhsh said. “We really liked iced teas as kids, even going into our adult years, but obviously over the age of 18, it’s pretty difficult to drink 40 grams of sugar in a sitting and feel good after.”

A serving of Halfday tea contains 8 grams of fiber and 3 to 4 grams of sugar. (A 12-oz serving of Snapple peach tea, by comparison, has 30 grams of sugar).

Halfday products are available on the brand’s website, drinkhalfday.com, as well as at select specialty and natural foods stores and online grocers including Thrive Market and Misfits Market.

“We get reviews from people who always drank Brisk or Arizona, and they’re able to switch without making that sacrifice, which is really cool,” said Jahanbakhsh, who described Halfday as “Snapple 2.0.”

He added, “They can basically reduce their sugar consumption by 80% to 90% and still get that full satisfaction of a classic iced tea; and, on top of that, the digestive health benefits.”

Research contact: @FoodBusinessNews

Photo source: NBC News

Baby gear companies are taking matters into their own hands amid shortage of essential items

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November 8, 2021

Supply chain issues are affecting nearly every industry, as the pandemic continues to cause manufacturing slowdowns, port congestion, and delivery delays—and baby gear like strollers and car seats is no exception, reports NBC News.

While most consumers have a rough “due date” for when they’ll need items for their newborn and can plan ahead, anything unexpected can happen—making availability of essential products that much more crucial.

“Strollers, car seats, they aren’t optional. These are products that customers literally cannot wait to buy when they need them,” said Amy Venzke, owner of Strolleria, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based baby gear store with an online presence.

Many of these items take on additional importance to consumers because they’re essential to keeping a baby safe and alive.

To minimize stress for consumers, baby gear retailers like Strolleria and Pish Posh Baby in Lakewood, New Jersey, are encouraging customers to do their research well in advance and buy ahead whenever they can. They’ve also changed their operations to combat supply chain issues.

Pish Posh Baby revamped its website to include an out-of-stock notification feature, so parents can be alerted as soon as something is available. It also takes some work off their plates because they don’t have to keep returning to a website to check for a product, according to Pish Posh Baby COO Charlie Birnbaum.

Pish Posh Baby also has been traveling to China to import products directly, which has helped cut out additional delays caused by manufacturers needing to store items in warehouses before releasing them to retailers.

Strolleria started offering customers the ability to preorder gear. These preorders aren’t for releases of new models; they’re for current models of strollers and car seats that are backordered.

“Instead of saying that this car seat isn’t available at all, we’re now offering presales, and customers are buying items with an expected future ship date,” Venzke told NBC News. “We don’t think customers want to be in a position of uncertainty.”

Her company has been monitoring global supply chains more closely and has been more proactive about forecasting availability and making purchases based on inventory reports from brands. Strolleria has also been stocking up its warehouse to prepare for future backorders, ordering gear for the next three to four months versus for just the next month.

But there are still issues. “Inventory will be fine and then basic items will be unavailable,” Birnbaum said. “It won’t just be an accessory; it’ll be a brand’s core item.”

Birnbaum said even though some companies stopped manufacturing certain items to focus on their key offerings, there are still times when a season-specific item such as a travel stroller will be unavailable for so long it misses its intended season. He said he anticipates that the issues customers faced with finding travel strollers over the summer will repeat themselves with stroller footmuffs this winter.

Among the products in short supply are the BabyZen Yoyo stroller; and the Doona stroller, which collapses into a car seat, Birnbaum said. Some customers are using social media to try to track down the most-scarce items.

“The entire experience of expecting a baby is overwhelming,” Venzke said. “[Parents] put in hours and days of research to find the perfect stroller and can get their heart set on one, so it’s very stressful and disappointing when it isn’t available.”

Research contact: @NBCNews

Above, a tarantula. (Photo source: Royal Examiner)

Creepy crawlies: If you live here, prepare to see thousands of tarantulas

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August 6, 2021

Catching an unexpected glimpse of a daddy longlegs spider in your home can make even folks who’d barely call themselves arachnophobes jump. A wolf spider sighting outdoors can frighten even the most intrepid explorers. And encountering a hairy tarantula can cause virtually anyone to freeze up.

Unfortunately for folks of one particular area of the United States, there’s about to be an influx of not just a few or a few hundred, but thousands of tarantulas in the very near future, Best Life reports.

Starting in August, Colorado—particularly the southeastern part of the state—will see a sudden uptick in its tarantula population.

The sudden influx of thousands of tarantulas, which typically begins between late August and September, according to the Colorado State University College of Agricultural Sciences (via The Gazette), is part of the arachnids’ annual migration.

For the Aphonopelma vogelae tarantula, more frequently found in the southwestern portions of the state, migration peaks in October.

But take heart: While seeing thousands of tarantulas descend on your area may be disconcerting, their presence is typically short-lived.

According to the Colorado State University College of Agricultural Sciences, following their migration, the tarantulas are active for a short period of time, but “all normally perish within a couple of months.”

And you won’t be the only one watching where you walk and sit. The Colorado-based tarantula migration isn’t the only major shift in habitats these furry arachnids may be making this year, however.

According to Christopher Vitek, PhD, an associate professor of biology at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley during their mating season between March and October, tarantulas frequently emerge from their usual habitats in states including Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah.

While tarantulas are unlikely to do harm to most humans, it’s wise to give them a wide berth if you encounter one in the wild.

“Their venom is of no medical significance, and contrary to popular belief, nobody has ever died from such a bite; most people compare the bite to that of a bee sting and experience no lasting ill-effects other than mild to moderate pain and slight swelling at the site of the bite,” Brent Hendrixson, PhD, chair of biology at Millsaps College, recently told Best Life.

Hendrixson says that if you do find a tarantula somewhere it shouldn’t be—inside your home, for example—and don’t feel comfortable picking it up, gently coax it into a jar with a soft-ended object like a paintbrush and remove it from the premises.

Research contact: @bestlife

Trump orders advisers to ‘go down fighting’

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November 6, 2020

As Election Day turns into election week, Donald Trump has delivered a simple message to his closest political and legal advisers as they began charting a plan to challenge results in several key states: Give them a court fight that “they’ll never forget.”

The president’s remarks, relayed by two people familiar with them, came as election results seemed trending Joe Biden’s way. And for Team Trump, it was meant as a clarion call to use every possible legal resource and bit of political organizing to help re-tip the balance of the scale, The Daily Beast reported.

Trump told his advisers that, even if Biden were to claw the presidency away from him, he wanted them to “go down fighting” harder than they ever had before, one of the sources with direct knowledge said.

Goaded by White House messaging, his base responded:

The Michigan Republican Party did not return a request for comment from The Daily Beast.

Trump’s legal team—including George W. Bush campaign veteran Mark “Thor” Hearne—asked a court in Michigan to halt absentee ballot counts because it alleged its observers had not been granted full access to the tally, and were not permitted to watch video footage of “remote and unattended dropboxes.”

It brought a similar suit in Pennsylvania, fighting to stop the tabulation on the grounds that its overseers had not been allowed within 25 feet of the counting effort.

Further, Trump’s lawyers filed to enter an ongoing Supreme Court case, hoping to convince jurists on the highest bench to overturn a state policy that would allow counties to count votes postmarked on Election Day and received as late as Friday. Jay Sekulow, a personal attorney and confidant of Trump’s, is overseeing the Supreme Court effort.

“Lawyer city,” Joe Grogan, formerly a top domestic policy adviser to President Trump, said, describing the situation on Wednesday afternoon. “It’s going to be really ugly.”

Research contact: @thedailybeast

Above, the Proud Boys gather in Portland, Oregon. (Photo source: Al Jazeera/Reuters)

Proud Boys deny sending threatening emails to Democratic voters in multiple states

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October 22, 2020

Law enforcement officials have been notified that voters in multiple states have received personalized emails purporting to be from the Proud Boys—a far-right, neo-fascist white supremacist group. The messaging is filled with intimidating threats aimed at Democrats, if they do not change their vote to Republican, The Hill reports.

CNN and The Washington Post first reported that voters in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Alaska, and Florida all said they received threatening emails warning them to vote for President Donald Trump in the upcoming election, adding that the mysterious sender claimed to have access to voter history and “will come after you” should they fail to vote for the president.

“You will vote for Trump on Election Day or we will come after you,” reads one email obtained by the Post,. Dozens were reportedly sent, including more than 180 to students, faculty and staff of the University of Florida, a school spokesperson told CNN.

Chris Krebs, the director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency tweeted that the agency was “aware of threatening emails with misleading info about the secrecy of your vote.”

“This is what we mean by not falling for sensational and unverified claims. The last line of defense in election security is you—the American voter. So be prepared, be a smart consumer and sharer of information. Vote with confidence,” added Chris Krebs.

Elections officials in Alaska and Florida confirmed to CNN that they were aware of the emails, with Alaska’s Division of Elections telling the network that federal authorities had been alerted. Representatives with elections boards in Pennsylvania and Arizona did not immediately return The Hill’s requests for comment. A spokesperson for the FBI’s field office in Anchorage also did not immediately return a request for comment from the Post.

The leader of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, told USA Today and CNN in a statement that his group was not responsible for the emails, which appeared to have been sent from an email address affiliated with the group but may have been the result of spoofing software, one expert told CNN.

“No, it wasn’t us. The people [who sent the emails] used a spoofing email that pretended to be us,” Tarrio said. “Whoever did this should be in prison for a long time.”

“We have spoken to the FBI and are working with them. I hope whoever did this is arrested for voter intimidation and for maliciously impersonating our group,” he added.

Trump recently faced criticism after he demurred follow his prompting by Fox News’s Chris Wallace to disavow the group during the first presidential debate between him and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

“Stand back and stand by,” Trump said during the contentious debate.

Research contact: @thehil

Editor’s note: According to multiple sources, U.S. officials on Wednesday night accused Iran of targeting American voters with faked but menacing emails and warned that both Iran and Russia had obtained voter data that could be used to endanger the upcoming election.

 

Photo source: Eurasia Group

Gallup: 66% of Americans still are ‘worried’ about COVID-19 exposure; 29% are ‘very worried’

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June 18, 2020

While about one-third of Americans believe, if you can’t see it, you can’t catch it; the rest of us still are relying on face masks and hand sanitizer. In fact, about two-thirds of Americans continue to say they “are  worried” about being exposed to the coronavirus, as multiple states see a new spike in cases, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday reveals, according to a report by The Hill.

Gallup found that 29% of respondents are “very worried” about exposure to the coronavirus, and 66% are either “somewhat” or “very” worried.

The proportion who are concerned about the coronavirus has risen since Gallup began asking the question in February, The Hill notes. That month, 36% of Americans said they were either somewhat or very worried about exposure—a figure that more than doubled in March; and has plateaued at somewhere between 63% and 67% since then.

Specifically, 37% of black respondents and 50% of Hispanics said they were “very” worried, compared to only 25% of white respondents. A number of studies have indicated that COVID-19 is impacting people of color at disproportionate rates across the country. 

And The Hill says, there are also partisan divides over how concerned Americans are, with 85% of Democrats saying they are at least somewhat worried that they or their family will come into contact with the virus, compared with 47% of Republicans and 66% of Independents.

There have been over 2.1 million confirmed coronavirus cases nationwide, and nearly 117,000 people have died.

The poll comes as several states across the country are seeing new spikes in coronavirus cases, throwing reopening plans into question. California, Texas, Arizona and Florida are among the states reporting the highest daily increases in case counts. In Texas, health authorities on Tuesday registered the state’s highest number of hospitalizations due to COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

The Trump Administration has sought to blame the rise in cases on the increasing number of tests, but experts say there has also been a rise in the percentage of tests that are coming back positive.

The Gallup poll surveyed 1,034 adults from May 28 to June 4.

Research contact: @thehill

Photo source: Bud Light

Bud Light promotes special edition alien-themed cans, as ‘raid’ of Area 51 approaches

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September 16, 2019

Next Friday, September 20, from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. (PDT), a huge group of alien enthusiasts—close to a million—has agreed to meet up at the U.S. government’s off-limits, heavily guarded  Area 51 in the desert 80 miles north of Las Vegas “and coordinate our entry.”

And just in time for that raid—on a facility at which scientists are rumored to study actual alien bodies and spacecraft—Bud Light is introducing alien-themed cans of beer “for legal drinking age humans;” as well as special wearables, such as caps with alien artwork.

However, Bud Light and its parent company, Anheuser-Busch, have made it clear that they are not necessarily encouraging the attack on Area 51.

Calling itself “the favorite light lager of American Earthlings,” the  Bud Light brand says, “”The way we see it, we’d much rather people crack open a crisp Bud Light with alien visitors rather than storm Area 51. Nothing says ‘we come in peace’ like sharing a beer with friends from another place or another galaxy. We promised to have beer waiting for any alien that wants it and we plan to deliver on that promise. Our hope is that humans stock up, too—because you never know when you might need some Bud Lights to welcome intergalactic neighbors.”

Starting on September 13, the alien cans of brew went on sale in Nevada, Arizona, and California . The special-edition aluminum cans feature a green alien and black background, as well as a new crest welcoming all extraterrestrials from near and far to crack a cold one.

To bring the fun to fans everywhere, Bud Light also has produced a line of limited-edition merchandise—including not only the caps, but koozies, shirts, and bomber jackets. Legal drinking age fans can purchase items online from the www.abgiftshop.com at prices of $100 or less.

Research contact: @BudLight

Above,President Donald Trump. (Photo source: A Panga for Your Thoughts)

GOP to cancel 2020 primaries and caucuses, as Trump rivals cry foul

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September 9, 2019

Is the GOP “running scared”? Four states are set to cancel their 2020 Republican presidential primaries and caucuses—a move that would block President Donald Trump’s challengers from even getting on the ballot.

Republican functionaries in South Carolina, Nevada, Arizona, and Kansas are expected to announce the cancellations this weekend, three GOP officials who are familiar with the plans told Politico.

According to the political news outlet, “The moves are the latest illustration of Trump’s takeover of the entire Republican Party apparatus. They underscore the extent to which his allies are determined to snuff out any potential nuisance en route to his renomination—or even to deny Republican critics a platform to embarrass him.”

“Trump and his allies and the Republican National Committee are doing whatever they can do to eliminate primaries in certain states and make it very difficult for primary challengers to get on the ballot in a number of states,” former Representative Joe Walsh (R-Illinois), who recently launched his primary campaign against the president, told Politico, adding, “It’s wrong, the RNC should be ashamed of itself, and I think it does show that Trump is afraid of a serious primary challenge because he knows his support is very soft.”

Walsh warned,“W e intend to be on the ballot in every single state no matter what the RNC and Trump allies try to do,” Walsh added. “We also intend to loudly call out this undemocratic bull on a regular basis.”

Former Massachusetts Governor. Bill Weld said in a statement, “We don’t elect presidents by acclamation in America. Donald Trump is doing his best to make the Republican Party his own personal club. Republicans deserve better.”

RNC officials said they played no role in the decisions, the news outlet reported. Trump aides said they supported the cancellations—but stressed that each case was initiated by state party officials.

The shutdowns aren’t without precedent for either the Democrats or the Republicans. South Carolina GOP Chairman Drew McKissick noted that his state decided not to hold Republican presidential primaries in 1984, when Ronald Reagan was running for reelection, or in 2004, when George W. Bush was seeking a second term. South Carolina, he added, also skipped its 1996 and 2012 Democratic contests.

“As a general rule, when either party has an incumbent president in the White House, there’s no rationale to hold a primary,” McKissick said.

Officials in several states said in statements provided by the Trump campaign that they were driven by the cost savings. State parties in Nevada and Kansas foot the bill to put on caucuses.

“It would be malpractice on my part to waste money on a caucus to come to the inevitable conclusion that President Trump will be getting all our delegates in Charlotte,” Nevada GOP Chairman Michael McDonald told Politico. “We should be spending those funds to get all our candidates across the finish line instead.”

Research contact: @politico

Analysts say that Democrat Kim Schrier has taken a lead in the race for the 8th District in Washington State. (Photo source: Schrier campaign)

Pundits shift nine House races toward Democrats

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November 6, 2018

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report shifted nine House races toward Democrats in a new forecast published on November 5—the day before the midterm elections—The Hill reported.

The changes predicted by Cook are as follows:

Three races — in Texas’s 6th and 10th Congressional Districts and in West Virginia’s 2nd — moved from solid Republican to likely Republican. Two other races—Florida’s 25th and 6th districts, went from likely Republican to leaning Republican.

The movement is the latest indication that Democrats still have the upper-hand in the House prior to Tuesday’s midterms, when Democrats need to pick up 23 seats to regain control of the lower chamber. 

Research contact: @thehill