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Hope everyone is staying cool and hydrated. Check out Unadilla Days on June 25.

For the second straight year, the board of trustees of the Nebraska State Colleges froze tuition at the Chadron State, Peru State, and Wayne State Colleges for the 2022-23 academic year. The board also reduced the non-resident undergraduate tuition rate to match the resident rate in an effort to encourage out-of-state students to attend a state college in the hopes of further addressing Nebraska’s workforce shortage.

It can be easy to forget to apply sunscreen when a sunny summer day beckons you to get outside and enjoy the great outdoors. But forgetting to apply sunscreen before spending time in the sun is a potentially deadly mistake. According to the World Health Organization, one in every three cancers diagnosed is a skin cancer. In addition, the Skin Cancer Foundation notes that one in five Americans will develop skin cancer by the age of 70. The discomfort of a sunburn might seem relatively harmless, but the relationship between sunburns and cancer risk is significant. The SCF notes that having five or more sunburns doubles your risk for melanoma, a type of skin cancer that often and quickly spreads to nearby lymph nodes. Perhaps that's one reason why the American Cancer Society reports that the number of new invasive melanoma cases diagnosed annually increased by 47 percent between 2010 and 2020. Avoiding sunburn by applying and reapplying a broad-spectrum sunscreen with a minimum sun protection factor (SPF) of 30 should be a priority for anyone spending time outdoors.

There was once a hidden gem several miles outside of Syracuse. A long tree covered driveway from the Turlington rail depot led to a gorgeous mansion and farm. Today this path is overgrown with grass and all that is left of this once prestigious property is an old carriage house that is now run down.

This year there are a number of different insects showing up in the area, and I am sure by the end of the summer we can expect many more. A few years ago we had high numbers of the Painted Lady Butterfly; and had thistle caterpillars in soybean fields causing some damage. This is the larval stage of the Painted Lady Caterpillars.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released Nebraska’s May employment data on Friday, June 17. Nebraska’s employment set another record high of 1,042,762. This is the 11th straight month of record employment in the state. Additionally, Nebraska’s unemployment rate remains the lowest in the nation, and in state history, at 1.9 percent.