National News

WASHINGTON – On Thursday, Administrator Isabel Casillas Guzman, head of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and the voice in President Biden’s Cabinet for America’s more than 33 million small businesses, celebrated new Census data showing a record-breaking 5.5 million new business applications were filed in 2023 alone, making it the strongest year of new business applications on record and the third consecutive year of […]

LINCOLN, Neb. – It was a stormy week across much of the eastern lower 48 states leading to widespread drought improvements east of the Rockies. A winter storm pummeled the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast over the weekend (January 6-7). Then a second system in its wake was ramping up across the Mississippi Valley toward the end

KANSAS CITY – Prices in the Midwest Region, as measured by the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), fell 0.2% in December, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.   The December decrease was a result of a 4.0% decline in energy costs, almost entirely driven by lower costs for gasoline. The

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has marked the one-year anniversary of the agency accepting applications through the Veteran Small Business Certification (VetCert) program, the SBA’s primary certification vehicle to expand federal contracting opportunities for all Veteran-Owned Small Businesses (VOSBs) and Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses (SDVOSBs). This effort is part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to expanding access to

WASHINGTON– Today,  Administrator Isabel Casillas Guzman, head of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and the voice in President Biden’s Cabinet for America’s more than 33 million small businesses and startups, announced the opening of the 2024 Growth Accelerator Fund Competition (GAFC). The competition offers $50,000 to $200,000 in prize awards in two stages to organizations to join SBA’s national

WASHINGTON, DC — The United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) will release the 2022 Census of Agriculture data Feb. 13, 2024.   NASS concluded the data collection this summer with a preliminary national return rate of 61%. The preliminary return rate in Missouri is 60.89%. The ag census, conducted once

Lindsay Johnson, National Drought Mitigation CenterRichard Heim, NOAA/NCEI LINCOLN, Neb. – A large storm system brought rain and snow to the Pacific and Atlantic coasts along with rain and snow in the eastern High Plains and Midwest. The Northeast remained largely unchanged from last week, with minor improvements in western New York, Pennsylvania and central

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A low pressure system developed over the Central Plains in conjunction with an amplifying upper-level trough dipping into the northern Plains brought active weather across much of the central to eastern U.S. Warm and moist air from the Gulf of Mexico moved northward ahead of the developing low pressure, producing widespread moderate

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A low pressure system developed over the Central Plains in conjunction with an amplifying upper-level trough dipping into the northern Plains brought active weather across much of the central to eastern U.S. Warm and moist air from the Gulf of Mexico moved northward ahead of the developing low pressure, producing widespread moderate