1.Conflict
I believe this news article is a Conflict News Value because of how it explains the way the impact of the flood is affecting people in Kashmir and Pakistan. The forces that are impacting the people are the flooding which is physical and the death toll rising which is emotional.
Hundreds Dead in Flooding in India and Pakistan
NEW DELHI — Relief operations continued Monday in the Indian-administered part of Kashmir and in parts of Pakistan where six days of rain and flooding have left hundreds of people dead, with the death toll likely to rise further.
On the Pakistan side of the border, Ahmed Kamal, a spokesman for the National Disaster Management Authority said that 194 people had been killed — 63 in the Pakistan-administered part of Kashmir and 131 in Punjab Province.
In the Indian-administered part of Kashmir, more than 150 people have been killed by the floods, with 140 dead in the Jammu region, according to the office of the divisional commissioner there, and at least 11 in the Kashmir Valley. The death toll is expected to rise, as parts of the Kashmir Valley were inundated and nearly inaccessible.
Telephone networks in Srinagar were down for much of Monday, and the police, army and special police forces in the city could not be reached.“For the next 48 hours our focus will remain on Srinagar and areas of south Kashmir because there are still a very large number of people stranded without food and water, and our idea is to pull them as quickly as possible,” Lt. General D.S. Hooda, chief of the Indian Army’s Northern Command, said at a news conference in Udhampur, Jammu, on Monday afternoon.
Shakeela Rahman, 34, has spent the past few nights sleeping on a divider on a road that connects Bemina, where she lives, to Srinagar. She fled her home with her two small children early Friday morning, after water started flowing into houses there.
“We have not eaten anything, my kids are starving, and our house is completely submerged under water,” Ms. Rahman said. Nearby, a camp for the Central Reserve Police Force was also flooded, and its personnel had spent the evening sleeping in buses parked outside.
In Srinagar’s Karan Nagar neighborhood, where Ahmad Mujtaba, his wife and three children were trying to reach the higher parts of the city, the water level rose several feet on Sunday.
“No one came to help us,” he said. “People are still trapped inside their buildings, children are dying and the government’s rescue operations have failed.”
O.P. Singh, an official with the Indian National Disaster Response Force, said that rescue efforts were slow in parts of Srinagar.
“We are facing some difficulty, and there is no communication with our rescue teams,” said Mr. Singh, an official with India’s National Disaster Response Force.
“It is practically impossible to go through the area with boats,” he said of parts of Srinagar. He said rescue operations in those areas had just begun, with Indian Air Force helicopters ferrying boats and rescue personnel between hard-to-reach areas of town, where they were collecting stranded people and bringing them to relatively safer areas.
The army has evacuated about 22,000 people, with 3,000 removed on Sunday, according to an army statement. The army distributed food, water, tents and blankets on Monday.
Part of the army quarters in Srinagar was flooded, and 900 army personnel had to be evacuated. Hospitals in Srinagar were also submerged.
Aerial images of the Kashmir Valley on Indian news channels showed entire neighborhoods submerged, with only roofs and treetops visible over muddy waters. People in Srinagar waded through hip-deep water, carrying children on their shoulders.
Sameer Ahmed Ganyie, who operates a small boat that he uses to ferry tourists on Dal Lake in Srinagar, said in a phone interview Monday morning that he was stranded at a hotel on the lake. Later, the water level reached the second story, and he attempted to take refuge on one of the many houseboats that dot the lake.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday, calling the floods “a national disaster.” In a newss release, he also expressed his “anguish at the loss that has been caused in neighbouring areas in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.”
He announced $166 million in aid to the Jammu and Kashmir state government for flood relief for the people affected, to supplement the state’s own disaster relief fund.
Mr. Modi also wrote to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan on Sunday. “I offer any assistance that you may need in the relief efforts that will be undertaken by the Government of Pakistan. Our resources are at your disposal wherever you need them,” he wrote.
Relations between India and Pakistan were strained last month when India called off foreign-secretary-level talks with Pakistan after a Pakistani envoy met with Kashmiri separatist leaders in India.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Pakistan on Sunday expressed “deepest condolences over the loss of precious lives of our Kashmiri brethren on both sides of the Line of Control,” the contested border dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan.
2. Prominence
In this article, the journalist explains how social media is helping police forces in Madrid, Spain in cracking down on crimes and criminals. Because this is different and new, I believe this would be categorized under being "newsworthy"- no one is being affected or impacted, but it's just general news which puts it under Prominence.
Police in Spain Arm Themselves With Social Media to Fight Crime
MADRID — When a European arrest warrant was issued recently for Brett and Naghemeh King, who took their cancer-stricken child out of a Hampshire hospital in the south of England without permission, the Spanish police did what has become increasingly common in the search for missing or wanted people: They posted an alert on Twitter.
Within three minutes, the police received a Twitter message saying that the British family’s minivan had stopped for gasoline the night before on a highway in Eskoriatza, in northern Spain, and was headed south. In coordination with British authorities, the police centered their search on Spain’s touristy southern coast. Two hours later, they received a call from a hotel receptionist near Málaga, who had seen the police alert and checked the license plate number on the minivan. The parents were then detained.
Police forces in Latin America and elsewhere have visited Spain recently to replicate its police department’s Internet strategy. This month, the New York Police Department announced that commanding officers would take a course on using Twitter and how to release better information online about investigations.
In the case of Ashya King, the boy with brain cancer, the police in Hampshire have been under pressure because of their handling of the case, including postings on the Internet. The Hampshire police “lookout” alert, accompanied by mug shots, was criticized as portraying the parents as hardened criminals, rather than people seeking alternative medical treatment for their son.
On Tuesday, the parents were released from custody in Spain after British prosecutors dropped the case.
Under Britain’s data protection act, the police have wide latitude to use and spread information. Still, the British police have investigated as many as 828 cases in which officers have been accused of abusing social media, including posting racist and threatening comments, according to documents obtained last month by The Associated Press. Almost 10 percent of the cases ended in the resignation, dismissal or retirement of the accused officers.
Isabela Crespo Vitorique, a technology and intellectual property lawyer at Gómez-Acebo & Pombo, a law firm in Madrid, said she was not aware of any court cases involving Spain’s police being accused of violating online privacy rules. She said Spain had “one of the strictest data privacy agencies in Europe,” but the courts had backed police officers, as well as private detectives, who were using social networks “as long as it is for professional investigative purposes.”
“It’s going to remain case by case and for the judge to value whatever proofs are presented,” said Borja Vidaurre Bernal, a partner at VTF Abogados, a media law firm in Madrid.
Carlos Fernández Guerra, the social media manager for the Spanish police, said he knew of only one “minor” internal police inquiry involving an officer who had posted an inappropriate photo online. Mr. Fernández Guerra, who worked previously as a journalist and in corporate public relations, leads a team of eight police officers who run the media department.
In some cases, a police department’s online presence increases markedly because of a crisis or major search. The number of followers for the Twitter account of the Boston Police Department rose fivefold after the bombings at the Boston Marathon last year.
In Spain, however, the growth in the department’s Internet presence has been more gradual and has been coupled with social awareness campaigning. Recent Twitter posts have urged beachgoers not to drive while wearing flip-flops and offered advice on how to erase unwanted photos from applications like WhatsApp. Spain’s police have also increasingly gone online to fight Internet fraud. A police alert was recently sent out about a fraudulent ad aimed at clients of Banco Santander, Spain’s largest bank by assets.
Another important advance, according to Mr. Fernández Guerra, has been so-called tweet raids, intended to guarantee confidentiality to people who help solve dangerous cases. The strategy involves sending a general alert on social media, then inviting people with information to respond to a private email account. Since 2012, the practice has helped in the arrests of more than 500 people suspected of involvement in drug trafficking, according to the Spanish police.
Mr. Fernández Guerra conceded that the online drive bothered officers who preferred to work the streets, but he said the strategy was backed by the director general of the national police, Ignacio Cosidó, who took charge in 2012.
To soften the formal and institutional image of Spanish law enforcement, some social media campaigns have included jokes or music soundtracks intended to appeal to young people.
Mr. Fernández Guerra said the youth response had been quite strong.
“A few years ago, it was unthinkable that an adolescent would want to be in touch with the police,” he said.
3. Human Interest
This article goes over how humans in North Korea are being put on trial and their emotional struggles through the court trials and long days of dealing with the punishments.
N. Korea says it will put American on trial
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — North Korea said Sunday that it would put Matthew Todd Miller, one of the three known Americans held in the country, on trial in a week.
Miller, 24, will be tried at the North’s Supreme Court next Sunday, the country’s state-run Korean Central News Agency said, indicating that his trial would be a one-day event with no appeals allowed. North Korea earlier said that Miller shredded his tourist visa and demanded asylum upon arriving in the country in April. Accusing him of unruly behavior, the North had said it would indict him on charges of committing a “hostile act” against the country.
Another American, Jeffrey Fowle, also is accused of a “hostile act.” Fowle arrived in the country on April 29. He is suspected of leaving a Bible in a nightclub in the northern port city of Chongjin. Christian evangelism is considered a crime in North Korea. Fowle has a wife and three children.
Last year, an American missionary named Kenneth Bae was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor on charges of hatching a plot to overthrow the government through proselytizing.
In separate interviews with CNN and the Associated Press last week, the three Americans said they admitted to being guilty and beseeched Washington to send a high-level envoy to negotiate their freedom. Fowle and Miller said they have met with the Swedish ambassador and have been allowed to make phone calls to their relatives.
The United States has repeatedly offered to send its envoy for North Korean human rights issues, Robert King, to Pyongyang to appeal for the release of the Americans, but without success. It has no diplomatic relations with NorthKorea, and relies on the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang to represent the interests of its citizens held there.
National Security Council spokesman Patrick Ventrell said the White House was “closely” following the cases and is doing all it can to win their “earliest possible release.”
North Korea had previously used charges of “hostile acts” to sentence Americans held there to long prison terms, as a means of securing visits from high-profile Americans.
(Found on Austin American Statesman)
4. Impact
In this article about a comedian's funeral, it covers how people are reacting and feeling towards this news/event while also explaining what happened at the funeral.
Comedian gets her star-studded funeral
NEW YORK — Howard Stern delivered the eulogy, Broadway singer-actress Audra McDonald sang “Smile” and bagpipers played “New York, New York” at Joan Rivers’ funeral Sunday, a star-studded send-off that — like the late comedian herself — brought together the worlds of Hollywood, theater, fashion and media.
At a funeral befitting a superstar, the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus sang Broadway hits, including “Hey Big Spender,” before six-time Tony Award-winner McDonald sang her tribute to Rivers, a champion of theater for decades.
Tributes and reminiscences were delivered by TV anchor Deborah Nor-ville, close friend Margie Stern, columnist Cindy Adams and Rivers’ daughter, Melissa, who spoke about how she respected her mother, who died Thursday at 81, and appreciated everyone’s support.
Hugh Jackman sang “Quiet Please, There’s a Lady On Stage” at the end of the memorial, and bagpipers from the New York City Police Department played on the streets as mourners filed out of Temple Emanu-El, many dabbing their eyes.
A legion of notables turned out to remember Rivers: comedians Kathy Griffin, Rosie O’Donnell and Whoopi Goldberg; E! network “Fashion Police” colleague and friend Kelly Osbourne; Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick; and celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz.
Theater stars Bernadette Peters, Alan Cum-ming and Tommy Tune were there. Record producer Clive Davis was, too.
Fashion designers Carolina Herrera, Dennis Basso and Michael Kors were in attendance. Stars from TV such as Barbara Walters, Geraldo Rivera, Diane Sawyer, Kathie Lee Gifford, Hoda Kotb and Andy Cohen. Late night band leader Paul Shaffer. And moguls Barry Diller, Donald Trump and Steve Forbes.
Mourners had lined up outside the Fifth Avenue synagogue and waited for their names to be checked against a list before entering. A crowd of media stood watch behind barriers, and fans from as far away as Australia and England lined the streets.
The comedian detailed in her 2012 book “I Hate Everyone ... Starting With Me” that she hoped for “a huge showbiz affair with lights, cameras, action” and “Hollywood all the way.”
Instead of a rabbi talking, Rivers asked for “Meryl Streep crying, in five different accents” and “a wind machine so that even in the casket my hair is blowing just like Beyonce’s.” Her wishes were so important they were printed in the funeral program.
Nearby on the sidewalk, Bronwen Brenner, 13, stood wearing pearls with a 1940s pillbox hat with a jewel-studded veil atop her magenta curls. Rivers would approve of her outfit, she said — except for the Converse sneakers.
“She probably would criticize me for not wearing heels,” she told the New York Times.
Her mother, Jamie Brenner, 43, said she thought all the hoopla surrounding the funeral on Fifth Avenue was deserved.
“How many 81-year-olds have a 13-year-old fan?” she asked.
Rivers’ cause of death is being investigated. She was hospitalized on Aug. 28 after she went into cardiac arrest during a routine procedure at a doctor’s office.
(Found on Austin American Statesman)
5. Novelty
Through this news story the journalist explains how people are still continuing to chauffeur people around in Austin even though it is illegal and the consequences they are receiving. But for some reason, the people who are committing these minor crimes won't quit their doing.
Uber driving around detours
Yes, giving someone a ride for pay without a chauffeur’s permit is still illegal in Austin.
Police have proved that more than 50 times since late May, handing out citations in what amounted to sting operations and, most of the time, impounding the drivers’ cars.
But ride-sharing companies Uber and Lyft are still matching riders with drivers. In fact, as the American-Statesman reported Saturday, some drivers are cashing in during periods of high demand with “surge pricing” that can boost the cost of a 6-mile ride to $142.50.
Although it might be uncomfortable to admit, the brazen tactics of such “transportation networking companies” — essentially openly flouting city and state laws to establish themselves here and elsewhere, and thus build public demand and political pressure for change — appear to be working.
The Houston City Council, over the objections of cab companies and cabbies, last month passed an ordinance legalizing the appbased ride providers. Dallas is considering doing so. Uber a few weeks ago hired David Plouffe, formerly a key adviser to President Barack Obama, to be its executive vice president for policy and strategy. The company’s website says Plouffe will be running a political campaign, “and the candidate is Uber.”
True, a German court just clamped down on Uber, ignoring the obvious tribute to Deutschland embodied in the company name. And the companies face plenty of legal hurdles in cities across the U.S. But the tide appears to be turning, at least here.
The Austin City Council, after solidly rebuffing an effort early in 2013 by Sidecar, voted in May to create an advisory committee to help design a pilot program for such companies.
Lyft and Uber plunged right in with announcements in late May and early June that they would be moving into Austin and signing up drivers, city code or no. As two members of that city advisory committee said in a recent letter to the council, and in an American-Statesman opinion piece last week, the pilot program has essentially begun on an ad hoc basis. Along with the ticketing and car-towing by the authorities.
“It’s kind of the Wild West right now, because we know the companies are out there operating,” Council Member Chris Riley told me in an interview last month. Riley has been pushing for the city to legalize the services for the past couple of years.
I asked him if he had taken one of the rides himself. “I’m not going to confess to any crime,” Riley said, although, technically, paying for one of the rides isn’t illegal. Being paid to provide one is illegal, absent a permit.
“Let’s just say I was close enough that I was able to get a feel for the experience,” he said. “It convinces you that the world has changed.”
Instant information about the car and who the driver will be, where they are in real time and when the ride will arrive. No cash changing hands.
A generally cheerful driver looking to make a good impression on the client, and vice versa, because both of them rate the other on the app after the ride. Poor ratings could mean trouble later giving or getting rides.
“People’s taxicab experiences don’t tend to go that smoothly,” Riley said.
As for those tickets and impoundment fees, Uber in at least some cases has covered the costs and provided a defense lawyer to handle the misdemeanor cases.
And the tickets aren’t moving violations, so no points accrue to the impoundee’s driving record.
Last week came an email from Uber touting the experience of one of its Austin drivers, Flo Gonzalez. There was a link to a slick two-minute company video featuring Gonzalez, a world geography teacher and wrestling coach at Westlake High School.
Gonzalez, sitting in his classroom and wearing a Chaps T-shirt, on the video extols how easy the service is, how he can go do it early in the morning and late in the evening, and still have time for his two daughters at home.
“I’m a teacher, a father of two. Don’t worry,” he says, “you’re in good hands.”
The spot, like others Uber made featuring Denver and Cincinnati educators, ends with this: “Teachers: Driving our future.”
An Eanes Independent School District spokeswoman was somewhat startled to hear of the video and the location of the shoot. Gonzalez told me that he had gone to the principal, and an Uber spokeswoman wrote me to say that the company had obtained permission to film on the campus.
Perhaps there were some crossed wires out in the hills, or insufficient awareness of Uber’s legal status in Austin.
If nothing else, Gonzalez’s eager and open touting of his Uberosity further indicates that the company and its ilk have already managed to at least partially legitimize their services.
Riley, for his part, in late August had an item on the council agenda to, in effect, jump past the pilot program and immediately legalize transportation networking companies on an interim basis while city works out a permanent ordinance: requirements for driver insurance, background checks on the drivers, rates for customers, fees for the city and a reporting regime.
Riley postponed the measure until a late September meeting, but he remains committed to bringing the rent-a-ride companies in from the cold.
“It is very clear that this is a popular service,” he said.
Just not a legal one. Yet.
(Found on Austin American Statesman)
6. Proximity
I believe this article shows proximity for this started in Dallas but is spreading throughout Texas schools. This could potentially effect us if it reaches Austin and is happening near us.
New math standards mean learning earlier
Students in upper grades to scramble to catch up.
DALLAS — Some Texas children are finding their teachers are moving at a faster pace after a shift in math test standards has forced educators to cover more ground.
The changes moved some content that previously was covered in higher grades to lower grades, according to a Dallas Morning News report. And students in upper grades will have to scramble to get up to speed with content that they should’ve covered in previous years under the new standards.
For instance, using a protractor to measure an angle was a skill learned at a sixth-grade level. Now students in fourth grade will learn to do it. Therefore, children currently in fifth and sixth grade are assumed to know how to use it, even if they did not cover it in previous years.
Last year’s State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness tests results showed that 9 percent of fifth-graders and 11 percent of eighth-graders did not pass the tests they needed to get automatic promotion.
A chart produced by the Richardson Independent School District shows that 46 percent of fifth grade students’ curriculum remained the same, 28 percent was moved down from the sixth and seventh grade and 26 percent is newcontent.
Children will also be required to cover more content on financial literacy since kindergarten.
Math standards for higher grades won’t change until next fall.
The changes have been coming since 2011, when the Texas Education Agency recommended major shifts.
However, STAAR tests this year will not count for promotion because the new exams will not have been field tested and the state needs to know how the students score before it sets a passing standard.
“The students will be exposed to what they need to know. Will the timelines be met? Yes,” said Oswaldo Alvarenga, Dallas’ executive director for STEM instruction.
(Found on Austin American Statesman)
7. Timeliness
This story was reported and post about 15 minutes ago by the time I read it. It was only just established and recently sent out to the world to hear.
An Energy Boom Lifts the Heartland
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — Waist-high weeds and a crumbling old Chevy mark the entrance to a rust-colored factory complex on the edge of town here, seemingly another monument to the passing of the golden age of American industry.
But deep inside the 14-acre site, the thwack-thwack-thwack sound of metal on metal tells a different story.
“We’re holding our own,” said Greg Hess, who is looking to hire draftsmen and machine operators at the company he runs, Youngstown Bending and Rolling. “I feel good that we saved this place from the wrecking ball.”
The turnaround is part of a transformation spreading across the heartland of the nation, driven by a surge in domestic oil and gas production that is changing the economic calculus for old industries and downtrodden cities alike.
Here in Ohio, in an arc stretching south from Youngstown past Canton and into the rural parts of the state where much of the natural gas is being drawn from shale deep underground, entire sectors like manufacturing, hotels, real estate and even law are being reshaped. A series of recent economic indicators, including factory hiring, shows momentum building nationally in the manufacturing sector.
Although that danger worries environmentalists here as well, there has been much less opposition because residents are so desperate for the kind of economic growth that fracking can bring, whatever the risks.The environmental consequences of the American energy boom and the unconventional drilling techniques that have made it possible are being fiercely debated nationwide. New York officials have imposed a moratorium on hydrofracking, or fracking, because of concerns that the fluids injected into the shale to free oil and natural gas deposits might contaminate the local drinking water.
Vallourec, a French industrial giant, recently completed a million-square-foot plant in Youngstown to make steel pipes for the energy industry, the first mill of its kind to open here in 50 years. The facility, which cost $1.1 billion to build, will be joined next year by a smaller $80 million Vallourec plant making pipe connectors.
The change is evident in the once-moribund downtowns of northeastern Ohio cities as well as in the economic data for the state as a whole.
Ohio’s unemployment rate in July was 5.7 percent, well below the national average of 6.1 percent. That’s a sharp reversal of the situation four years ago, when unemployment in Ohio hit 10.6 percent, significantly above the country’s overall jobless rate at the time, as manufacturers here and elsewhere hemorrhaged jobs. In the Youngstown area, the jobless rate in July was 6.7 percent, compared with 13.3 percent in early 2010.
“Both Youngstown and Canton are places which experienced nothing but disinvestment for 40 years,” said Ned Hill, a professor of economic development at Cleveland State University. Now, “they’re not ghost towns anymore. You actually have to go into reverse to find a parking spot downtown.”
Youngstown and surrounding Mahoning County is hardly Silicon Valley or even Pittsburgh, which long ago bade farewell to its industrial past and sought out growth in new sectors like health care and education. Broad swaths of Youngstown look almost rural, the result of a decade-long campaign to tear down abandoned homes and factories, letting sites that were once eyesores return to nature.
And the new factories that have gone up — like Vallourec’s new complex, or a $13.2 million plant that Exterran opened in May 2013 to make oil and gas production equipment for local customers — employ only a fraction of the workers who once labored at Youngstown’s mills. Vallourec’s state-of-the-art pipe mill has about 350 workers; the old Youngstown Sheet & Tube plant that once stood on the site had a work force of 1,400 when it shut down in 1979.
But the improvement is undeniable, especially to those who grew up here. “It’s a night-and-day difference,” said Robert E. Roland, a Youngstown native who moved away when he was 18, and is now managing partner at one of Canton’s biggest law firms, Day Ketterer. “It was extremely depressed, and nobody was downtown except for people who were down and out.”
A 2013 McKinsey study co-written by Ms. George estimated that production of shale gas and so-called tight oil from shale could help create up to 1.7 million jobs nationally. Many of those jobs are expected to end up in places like this, in part because they are close to newly developed fields like the nearby Utica shale formation.
The United States still imports hundreds of billions of dollars more in manufactured products than it exports. But industrial production has rebounded strongly in the wake of the Great Recession, up roughly 20 percent since the end of 2009. Employment in the factory sector, after a steep fall during the downturn, has also recovered. Since hitting bottom in early 2010, manufacturers have added nearly 700,000 jobs, bringing total factory employment in the United States to 12.2 million.
At the same time, cities like Youngstown and Canton are also beginning to emulate the advances of places like Cleveland, which went through an earlier revival as more white-collar jobs arrived.
Mr. Roland, for example, is planning to hire lawyers in Youngstown and open a branch there. “I never thought I’d consider being in business in Youngstown,” he said. “But we think this is a market for us and we need a foothold.”
Downtown Youngstown’s new federally financed center for advanced manufacturing is drawing notice as well, including a mention in President Obama’s last two State of the Union addresses.
Consumer-oriented businesses that survived the lean years are also enjoying a resurgence. Kravitz Delicatessen in the nearby suburb of Liberty has a Vallourec sandwich on the menu (corned beef and pastrami with Swiss cheese and coleslaw), a testament to how much business the 75-year-old Jewish-style deli draws from green-vested Vallourec workers, and from catering corporate events.
Vallourec plant, “you’d come in at lunch and half the people were wearing green,” said the deli owner, Jack Kravitz. “The Utica shale brought in Vallourec, which brought in more workers and helped me hire more people.”
In the energy surge, Canton has emerged as the center for white-collar jobs associated with the energy industry, like engineers, surveyors and other specialists. About an hour’s drive from both Cleveland and Youngstown, Canton borders the rural region farther south in Ohio where increasingly large quantities of natural gas are being pumped out of the Utica shale.
Rettew, a nationwide engineering services firm based in Lancaster, Pa., first opened a field office in Canton in August 2011, with a handful of employees driving in from Pennsylvania and staying in local hotels from Sunday to Thursday.
Today, Rettew has 35 employees in Canton. Most of these jobs pay $50,000 to $100,000, which goes far in the area, especially considering the relatively cheap housing, said Jake Wilburn, Rettew’s regional manager in Ohio.
The economic impact in rural areas of Ohio is less visible but equally significant. Mostly hidden from view behind trees off a two-lane road in rural Harrison County is an Erector-setlike maze of tanks and distillation towers, one of three huge plants in the area built by Access Midstream, an energy firm based in Oklahoma City.
Over the last two years, the company has spent $1.8 billion on new infrastructure to help refine and separate the raw hydrocarbons that come out of the Utica shale.
“This is a 50-year asset,” said Scott Hallam, who oversees Access’s efforts in the Utica shale. “We wouldn’t be spending billions here if we didn’t believe that.”
With help from investors in New York, Mr. Marchionda is planning to turn a landmark 1907 building that was once home to the executive offices of Youngstown Sheet & Tube into an upscale hotel.Construction is expected to begin in mid-2015.
The son of a steelworker, Mr. Marchionda, 54, witnessed Youngstown’s precipitous decline, but has become a believer in its nascent renaissance. “I wanted to leave so badly when I graduated high school and the steel mills were closing,” he said. “It’s nice to be a part of bringing the city back.”
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