Fungi Attack Azaleas
“We’ve had a number of samples come into the lab,” said Jean Williams-Woodward, aplant pathologist with the University of Georgia Extension Service. “So far, we’re findingtwo main causes of the branch dieback.” In Georgia landscapes, azaleas practically sing spring. So do rhododendrons in much ofthe state. But this year, many people are finding dead branches in both of these prizedornamentals. The less serious of the causes, she said, are fungal diseases that got into the branchesthrough some kind of wound. “These fungi get in and cause a canker — a sunken, dark brown, grayish area,”Williams-Woodward said. “Sometimes they can girdle the stem. And when that happens,the branch dies.” Once these fungal cankers have girdled a branch, she said, you can’t save it. But you canspare the rest of the shrub. Just prune out the dead branch and keep the plant properlymulched and watered to reduce stress. “We had a warm fall last year,” she said. “Many shrubs weren’t properly hardened off yetwhen we had a sudden cold snap in December. That caused some bark splitting in sometender branches.” “Then change the drainage,” Williams-Woodward said. “Raise the bed, or amend the soil.You have to make the site drain better, or the next plant won’t fare any better.” A long, mild spring then complicated the problem, allowing fungi to infect the wounds thecold snap left. The main culprits, she said, are Phomopsis in azaleas and Botryosphaeria inrhododendrons. Sometimes, though, the problem isn’t contained with the branch. Sometimes a single fungal canker won’t girdle a stem, she said. But two or more on thesame stem can produce the same result. You can tell the difference, she said, by cutting along the branch. If the dead, cankeroustissue isn’t contained within the stem but goes to the base of the plant, the problem is rootrot. “The more serious problems we’ve seen are root rots,” Williams-Woodward said. “Theseare caused by fungi, too. But they’re the result of poorly drained or compacted soils.” And the remedy isn’t so simple. The first step is to remove the plant — it isn’t going tosurvive.
According to the Maine-Endwell Central School District’s website, the district was notified on Sunday that four staff members, and an off campus BOCES student, tested positive for the coronavirus. The district announced contact tracing for Maine-Memorial is complete, and will return for in-person learning on Monday. The cases were at both Maine-Memorial and Homer Brink Elmentary Schools. ENDWELL (WBNG) — Homer Brink Elementary School students will learn from home this week due to multiple COVID-19 cases.
MECSD is working with the Broome County Health Department to contact trace individuals. The district added contact tracing and its disruption to school operations were also reasons to move the Homer Brink students remote this week. As a result, the school will shift to a remote learning model which will run from Monday, October 19 through Friday, October 23.
“Some of the main motives for digital nomads to come to Croatia is the desire to explore and create experiences of Europe, the beauty of nature and the sea in Croatia. For digital nomads, Croatia is an ideal opportunity to connect with other people in some way, to explore the beauties of a certain destination. The most important aspects of everyday work for digital nomads are the ability to access the Internet, a comfortable place to work and live, in general the atmosphere of the community and the environment in which they live is very important to nomads, the possibilities of various activities that interest them”, Said Tanja Polegubic, emphasizing that digital nomads show great interest in many cities in Croatia, especially in Dubrovnik, Split, Zagreb and the islands. Find out more about the conference, the program and the list of lecturers HERE. “The whole story is on the trail of our strategy of directing activities towards different markets with different interests. Dubrovnik has the potential to become a prestigious destination in this regard. This is a project that needs to be recognized by the entire local community, and it seems to me that it sees potential. Already during the preparations for this conference, I received positive feedback from the community. “, said the director Hrnić and emphasized that digital nomads are mostly financially well-off people, who stay longer in the destination and spend significant funds in it. With their activities and way of life, they would be ambassadors of Dubrovnik and influencers who would spread the image of Dubrovnik all over the world. The director of the Dubrovnik Tourist Board, Ana Hrnić, explained that the Tourist Board recognized the importance of the project in time, which, as she said, strengthens the position of the year-round destination. “Global tourism has experienced a turnaround, many destinations will certainly go in other directions, and it is no longer mass tourism but target groups and other forms of tourism. It is tourism that respects the quality of life. One of our directions there are digital nomads. Croatia has recognized the potential and is introducing visas that will make it easier for nomads to come and stay in the Republic of Croatia”, Said on this occasion the Mayor of Dubrovnik Mato Franković. Thus, Dubrovnik is the first city in Croatia to turn to digital nomads, and the organization of this conference provides an opportunity to present itself to this audience in light of the announced introduction of visas for digital nomads in Croatia. In addition to a comfortable living space, one of the basic prerequisites for the arrival of digital nomads in a destination is the appropriate infrastructure. ”The City of Dubrovnik has signed a contract with the Government of the Republic of Croatia worth 90 million kuna in order to strengthen the Internet in the entire City. I believe there are many benefits to working to get as many digital nomads as possible to our City”, Said also the mayor Franković. The organizer of the announced conference, the founder of the company “Saltwater”, Tanja Polegubic thanked the City of Dubrovnik for accepting the initiative and enabling the holding of this conference, which is a great opportunity for the local community to meet digital nomads. As part of the European Freelance Week (# EFWEEK2020), the Dubrovnik International Conference for Digital Nomads will be held in Lazareti from 16 to 25 October. These are business people who mostly come from the USA and the UK, and in a certain destination they mostly stay for a week, a month or even up to 3 months, while for some it becomes a permanent home. The process of making Croatia the second country in Europe (after Estonia) and the fifth in the world to introduce this type of visa is planned to be completed in early 2021. 
In his three decades growing strawberries and blueberries, Cristobal Picon has learned how to grapple with problems ranging from droughts and driving winds to floods and freezes. But this year, the coronavirus outbreak has proven too much.Every spring, Picon’s fields in Huelva, on the Atlantic coast of Spain tucked between Seville and the border with Portugal, are normally teeming with some 200 workers mostly from Morocco and Romania pulling the delicate berries from the plants and packing them for shipment. But this year, there are fewer than 100, largely locals — and Picon has no clue how he’s going to get the harvest in.“You can cushion a bad crop, but when you have 80% of your production ready to be picked and no one to do it, you feel powerless,” Picon said. “We don’t know how this is going to end.” France expects some 200,000 workers will fail to show up this year. Coldiretti, an association of Italian farmers, estimates the country will be short as many as 100,000 foreign laborers. Germany typically has 30,000 migrant farm workers in March and 80,000 by May, but this year only a fraction of that number have shown up, according to Agriculture Minister Julia Kloeckner. On Thursday, the country closed its borders to migrant laborers from outside the European Union’s visa-free travel zone.“The labor situation along the entire food supply chain is under immense strain,” Kloeckner told reporters in Berlin Thursday. “The number of workers from neighboring countries is falling fast.”With restaurants, hotels, and shops mostly shuttered due to the pandemic, governments are hoping people from those sectors, or students facing months without classes, will fill the void. French Agriculture Minister Didier Guillaume on March 24 asked anyone who’s out of work to step up “so we can all eat.”Germany has created a website listing thousands of unfilled agricultural jobs. A similar initiative in Austria has seen 7,000 people sign up since eastern European butchers and pickers headed home en masse as borders slammed shut a week ago, but the government says the country needs three times that number.Topics : From Huelva to Hamburg and Newcastle to Naples, Europe’s farmers are struggling to find people to bring in rapidly ripening fruits and vegetables, which frequently must be hand-picked, usually within a window of just a few days. They typically rely on seasonal workers from eastern Europe or northern Africa, but fears of the coronavirus are keeping hundreds of thousands of migrant laborers from leaving home, and controls on once-unfettered borders are stopping many of those willing to make the trip.Strawberries and asparagus are already being left to rot in Spain, Italy, and southern France. Farther north, producers of everything from salad greens and tomatoes to onions and peas are fretting about what to do as the spring and summer growing season picks up.The labor problems have some in the business worried that urban shoppers could face produce shortages. The concern is that even crops that get picked won’t reach consumers because outdoor markets are closed and transport links are iffy.“The cities may soon start to lack fresh fruit and vegetables,” said Sebastien Heraud, a farmer in the Dordogne region of southwestern France and a leader of Coordination Rurale, an agricultural union. “Even those of us who can harvest have trouble selling.”
Six provinces have declared siaga (alert) status for forest and land fires, National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) spokesman Raditya Jati said on Monday.“The BNPB has asked administrations at the provincial, regency and city level to increase their preparedness against forest fires, such as by imposing emergency alert statuses,” he said in a press statement on Monday.The length of the emergency period varies among each province, located in Sumatra and Kalimantan islands, he added. Read also: COVID-19 presents new challenges in forest fire controlThe six provinces are Riau, where forest and land fires are predicted to last from Feb. 11 to Oct. 31, South Sumatra (May 20 to Oct. 31), Jambi (June 29 to Sept. 26), West Kalimantan (July 2 to Nov. 30), Central Kalimantan (July 1 to Sept. 28) and South Kalimantan (July 1 to Nov. 30).According to Environment and Forestry Ministry data, South Sumatra had 336,798 hectares affected by fires, while Central Kalimantan 317,749 ha, West Kalimantan 151,919 ha, South Kalimantan 137,848 ha, Riau 90,550 ha and Jambi 56,593 ha.Raditya said prevention could be carried out if both the ground and air task forces could extinguish hot spots as soon as possible.The BNPB has deployed a total of 6,000 personnel, with 1,000 personnel in each of the six provinces. The agency has also prepared three helicopters in Jambi for water bombing, 11 in South Sumatra, eight in Riau, one in West Kalimantan and five in Central Kalimantan. Topics :
Currently, almost every Dutch scheme has an ESG policy based on the sector’s code for pension funds and the Pensions Act. The latter requires schemes to report on how they take the environment, climate, human rights, and social relations into account.In practice, however, every pension fund lays the emphasis in a different way, depending on industry, sponsor, or occupation of its participants.The Pensions Federation said it would seek a covenant “matching the sector’s diversity and offering added value to the pension funds and society”.It added that it wanted to use the OECD’s directive for multinational companies, as well as the UN’s Principles for Responsible Investment and “guiding principles” for companies and human rights for its ESG agreement.The €382bn civil service scheme ABP said that pension funds could benefit from each other’s experience and added that joint definitions and standards would help them operating more efficiently.ABP, however, emphasised that agreements must be clear, measurable, and feasible.Meanwhile, a separate study by GRESB and consultant Finance Ideas has suggested that only the largest pension funds, such as ABP and the €185bn healthcare fund PFZW, deploy all available tools for ESG policy.The study, which examined 171 pension funds, found that only the largest schemes took part in impact investing and had set reduction targets for carbon emissions.“Small funds have insufficient staff to implement ESG,” said Piet Eichholz, professor of finance at Maastricht University, who guided the survey. “Moreover, they are often passive investors.”In his opinion, increased co-operation could enable smaller pension funds to increase their potential for ESG policy.The researchers also concluded that the richer a pension fund is, the more attention it pays to social and responsible investment.Eichholz said they did not find a difference in ESG approach between the large sector schemes and company pension funds.GRESB – which leads ESG efforts in the real assets space – and Finance Ideas looked at nine different ESG criteria, ranging from impact investment to full exclusion.According to Eichholz, all pension funds had excluded companies from investment, such as manufacturers of cluster munitions.Six out of 10 schemes reported extensively about their ESG efforts, with half of the surveyed pension funds using engagement and voting during annual general meetings. The Dutch Pensions Federation plans to draw up an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) covenant for pension funds, which would also involve government and societal organisations.The agreement, for “international corporate social responsibility” (IMVO), is aimed at improving co-ordination and the exchange of expertise between pension funds, which should result in shared definitions and standards, according to the federation.A spokesman said that 70 pension funds – representing 84% of Dutch schemes’ assets – had already signed the declaration of intent for the covenant.The federation indicated that it was still assessing which organisations it would approach for the agreement.
Anderson, In. — Hoosier Park Racing & Casino has officially announced its 2018 Epic Summer of Music lineup. Kicking off on June 23 with Randy Bachman, the series will also feature Martina McBride on July 27, George Thorogood and The Destroyers with Foghat on August 3, and Aaron Lewis on Sept. 2. Tickets go on sale to the public May 4, with a special Club Centaur pre-sale event on May 2.Advance ticket sales are available to Club Centaur members on May 2 at Hoosier Park and Indiana Grand Racing & Casino box offices located in Shelby’s Gifts. Tickets go on sale to the public on May 4, and are available at respective box offices or through Ticketmaster.All concerts start just after the end of live racing for the evening and will take place on Hoosier Park’s outdoor music center stage.Setting the stage for the summer on June 23, Randy Bachman is the founding member of Bachman Turner Overdrive and The Guess Who. He is known as the most celebrated musician in Canadian history, and is famous for 1970s rock hits like American Womanand Roll On Down the Highway.Country music singer-songwriter Martina McBride, taking the stage on July 27, has two greatest hits albums and has sold more than 14 million records. Known for hits like Independence Day and My Baby Loves Me, McBride has won Country Music Association’s Female Vocalist of the Yearaward four times and Academy of Country Music’s Top Female Vocalistaward three times.On August 3, George Thorogood And The Destroyers will perform their high-energy blues and rock show with hits like Bad to the Boneand Who Do You Love. Opening for them are classic rock favorites, Foghat. Thorogood has released more than 20 albums, with two certified as platinum and six certified as gold. In 2014, his band celebrated their 40thanniversary of performing and this year has seen the acclaimed release of George’s first-ever solo album, Party Of Oneon Rounder Records.Back by popular demand, country music star Aaron Lewis will close out Hoosier Park’s summer concert series on September 2 as a part of a special Labor Day weekend celebration. Well known for his hit single That Aint Country, Lewis’s indoor show in October of 2017 at Hoosier Park sold out within an hour of going on sale. Lewis is also well-known as a founding member and lead singer of rock band Staind.In addition to the ticketed shows this summer, Hoosier Park’s annual Fourth of July celebration will be held on Wednesday, July 4 and will feature live harness racing, a free outdoor concert by The Duke Boys and the largest fireworks show in the Indianapolis area.“Each and every summer, we work to build a first-class concert lineup offering an entertainment experience that is second to none,” said Centaur Gaming President and COO Jim Brown. “Each of these shows bring a different flavor to the outdoor music center, and we’re looking forward to an epic summer of music with our guests.”The 2018 Epic Summer of Music Series is presented by American Elevator, Inc., Barcardi, Gigi’s Cupcakes, The Herald Bulletin, Maker’s Mark, Hudson Rentals, Modern Trailer Sales, Piazza Produce & Specialty Foods, and Deem Mechanical and Electrical.The Hoosier Park outdoor music center accommodates up to 4,500 reserved ticket seats. The music center features a wide variety of ticket options, including premium VIP seating and private party decks complete with personal beverage service.
The 29-year-old told Spanish newspaper Marca last week he did not know whether he would be returning to Swansea this summer to see out the final year of his contract – and Monk was also giving few clues when the subject was raised ahead of Everton’s Barclays Premier League visit on Saturday. “I’m sure we will make contact with Michu before the end of season,” Monk said. “But we’ll let his season finish and our season finish before we sit down at some point to discuss the future. “I know he’s had a difficult time with injury and his concentration right now is on getting back to fitness. “He’ll want to finish the season off strong there and I’ll speak to him in the summer. “I’ll get his side of things and where he wants to take his future and I’ll assess it from my side as well.” Michu scored only twice in the Premier League last season before joining Napoli and Monk made it clear that the player was determined to head to Italy. “I had a good discussion with him last summer and this was the way he wanted to go with Napoli,” Monk said. The once-capped Spain striker has spent a frustrating season on loan at Napoli where injury has seen him make just five appearances for Rafa Bentitez’s Serie A giants. Michu scored 22 goals in his first season at Swansea after signing from Rayo Vallecano for £2.2million in July 2012 and broke into the Spain squad, but two injury-riddled campaigns since have raised doubts about his future in south Wales. Press Association “But he’s coming back to full fitness now and hopefully he will have a good end to the season there. “I’ve got a good relationship with Michu, we were team-mates before I became manager, and I was fine with how he wanted to go. “I’ve kept an eye on him and it’s our duty as a club to understand what’s exactly going on with Michu on a game to game basis. “He hasn’t had a sustained period where he’s been fit and it’s always hard as a player when that happens. “He’s been unfortunate, but if he get can a sustained period of fitness I’m sure you’ll see the quality we’ve seen here.” One player who has been fit and firing, however, is French striker Bafetimbi Gomis who has scored three goals in his last two appearances as Swansea have recorded back-to-back wins over Aston Villa and Hull to move within a single point of their best Premier League haul with seven games still remaining. Gomis had a difficult first half to the season playing second fiddle to Wilfried Bony but the Ivorian’s initial £25million sale to Manchester City has seen him become the club’s first-choice striker and he has grasped the opportunity in recent weeks. “When Wilfried left and he was starting games Bafe was probably too eager to do well,” Monk said. “His effort and commitment have always been great but he was trying too hard to score goals. “He’s kept that effort and commitment but he’s probably more relaxed now, he’s showing his composure in games now and that is vitally important.” Swansea manager Garry Monk says he will listen to Michu before deciding whether the Spaniard has a future at the Liberty Stadium.
Southampton manager Ronald Koeman heaped praise on Sadio Mane after his record-breaking hat-trick kicked off an “amazing afternoon” against Aston Villa. Press Association This has been a remarkable season for Saints but one which looked to be petering out after a downturn in performances left them winless in four matches. Back-to-back defeats at struggling Sunderland and Leicester were particularly uninspiring, but they hit back in some style as FA Cup finalists Villa were swatted aside 6-1 at St Mary’s. “I speak a lot to Sadio because first of all an important thing for the player is he has to know what his best quality is and the rest of the players have to know what the best qualities of Sadio (are). “Sometimes I have a discussion and say ‘you sometimes go down too much when backing in. You need to make movements in the space and then you are so dangerous because nobody is so fast as you’. “He is a scorer. If you go down or to the midfield you are a long way from the goal of the opponent and you have to use your qualities. “Today he demonstrated what we expect from Sadio. He’s a great player, a great run player in front. “We know for some players it’s the first season in the Premier League but you have to learn and still he’s a young player and he can do much better than he did. I believe that.” Few foresaw this result given recent results and the upturn in fortunes Tim Sherwood has overseen. However, Villa capitulated during a remarkable first half and were unable to get back into the game, with Christian Benteke’s fine header on the stroke of half-time merely a consolation goal. “I am disappointed – disappointed that the 45 minutes of football there was not good enough,” Sherwood said. “Credit to Southampton, they punished every mistake we made. We made quite a few as a group. “I’m not just talking about defenders, midfielders, attackers – the coaching staff, everyone who was involved at this football club has to take responsibility and we do. It wasn’t good enough. “We feel very sorry for our travelling fans who stuck with us right until the end and Aston Villa fans around the country and around the world. “Since I’ve been in the club those are the only 45 minutes I can complain about. We have to not get too carried away and put it behind us as we have no choice but to move on to our next game which is Burnley at home. “We’ve still got enough in us to get results to stay in the Premier League which was the objective.” “I enjoyed it very much like all the fans because we play great football,” Koeman said. “We had great spirit from the beginning and that was the difference between the last away games and today, and some help from Aston Villa who played offside, high defending, (gave us) a lot of space and then you have to punish that. “It was an amazing afternoon. You don’t expect that to be honest but I was expecting a reaction of the team after the last two games. “It was great because it’s our last home game and the fans deserved this one because they had an amazing support of the team. It was a very enjoyable afternoon.” The result is a timely boost in Southampton’s fight for a Europa League berth and one which certainly brings a feel good factor back to St Mary’s. Saints move onto their best-ever Premier League points tally of 60 after a win in which Shane Long’s brace and a Graziano Pelle volley complemented a memorable contribution from Mane. The Senegal international’s treble early in the first half was wrapped up in two minutes and 56 seconds – the quickest in Premier League history, beating the record of four minutes and 33 seconds set by Liverpool’s Robbie Fowler in 1994 against Arsenal. “It’s not normal to score a hat-trick in two or three minutes, not in the Premier League, Holland or the worst league in the world,” Koeman said of Mane, signed from Red Bull Salzburg for £10million last summer. 
Share this:FacebookRedditTwitterPrintPinterestEmailWhatsAppSkypeLinkedInTumblrPocketTelegram Britain’s Andy Murray celebrated his rise to world number one by beating American John Isner 6-3 6-7 (4-7) 6-4 to win his first Paris Masters title.The victory brought Murray his sixth ATP title of a memorable 2016.The Scot, 29, also added his second Olympic and Wimbledon titles on his way to the top of the rankings.Today he will be officially confirmed as Britain’s first singles number one since computerised rankings were introduced in 1973.Murray’s ascent was confirmed by Milos Raonic’s withdrawal from Saturday’s semi-final with a leg injury, but the hype around his accomplishment did nothing to knock his concentration.He now heads to the season-ending World Tour Finals as top seed for the first time – but if previous number one Novak Djokovic wins every match at the Finals he will reclaim the top ranking he held for 122 weeks.The draw for that competition takes place today at 15:00 GMT.After double-faulting on the first point of the first game, Murray soon clicked into gear, breaking for a 4-2 lead, and showing watertight defence to close the door on Isner when the American created two break points of his own in the next game.Murray managed only six points on his opponent’s serve in the set, but that was enough to take it in 35 minutes.The unseeded Isner continued to put pressure on Murray in the second, showing an increasing deftness at the net to take the second set to a tie-break.And the 6ft 8in 31-year-old had too much for the Scot in the decider, serving imperiously to take the breaker 7-4.Twice in Isner’s first two service games of the third set Murray saw break points snatched away by his opponent’s huge serve.But Murray was not be denied, and he finally forced a break at 5-4, firing in a rapid backhand that Isner could only dig into the net, to take the third set and the match.