The University of Evansville Department of Philosophy and Religion has launched the inaugural Tri-State Truth, Meaning, and Value Essay Competition in an effort to encourage regional high school students to think about the challenges facing humanity today and in the future.
“We want to encourage young adults to think clearly and to think big,” said Tony Beavers, UE professor of philosophy. “That’s why at UE, we help students to develop their intellectual competence and confidence and find the courage to face the future unafraid.”
The department plans to sponsor the essay competition annually, establishing a new concept each year for students to develop their essays around. This year, the department is asking students to answer the question, “What lessons should humanity learn from the 2020 coronavirus pandemic?”
Each essay will be judged by a panel of UE faculty members. Top three winners will be awarded a cash prize of up to $500, and two honorable mentions will also be awarded.
Essays should be around 1500 words in length, and they will be judged based on academic merit, creativity, and expression of practical wisdom. Proper use of grammar and form will also be considered.
More information about the competition as well as complete rules and a submission form can be found at www.evansville.edu/TMVessay.
A western Vanderburgh County man is in custody this evening on attempted murder charges after shooting his father with a rifle.
On Saturday, April 18, 2020, deputies with the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office were dispatched to 4700 Posey County Line Road in Vanderburgh County. A caller had reported that he had been shot in the stomach by his son. Posey County Sheriff’s Office deputies also responded to the scene. The victim had reportedly been driven to Deaconess Midtown by his wife. The suspect, later identified as Zachery T. Mueller, had fled the scene. Responding deputies located a rifle and a knife in the front yard of the residence. The residence was secured and detectives were notified.
The victim advised that he and Mueller began arguing over Mueller playing his music too loud. The argument escalated to a physical confrontation. The victim stated he then left with his wife for a short time to cool off. When they returned, Mueller was holding a rifle while standing outside the residence. The victim stated he took the weapon from Mueller and placed it in the car, intending for his wife to take it away from the residence. Mueller then retrieved the rifle from the car, pointed it at the victim and pulled the trigger. The victim stated that he left immediately with his wife to go to the hospital.
Zachery Mueller began making intermittent phone contact with his mother and then a negotiator with the Evansville Police Department, during which Mueller made suicidal comments. Mueller was also suspected of being in possession of a loaded handgun. Members of the US Marshals Fugitive Task Force, including Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office deputies and an Indiana State Police trooper, located Mueller’s vehicle on SR 65. With the assistance of patrol deputies along with officers from the Evansville Police Department, Mueller was stopped in the parking lot of the Armstrong Recreation Center. Mueller was taken into custody without incident.
Mueller was transported to the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office Operations Center and interviewed by detectives. He admitted to shooting his father, but claimed it was an accident. He did state that he had “blacked-out†with rage during the confrontation with his father.
Mueller was arrested and booked into the Vanderburgh County Jail where he will be held without bond pending a court appearance. The victim, who sustained a gunshot wound to his abdomen, is in stable condition and is expected to make a full recovery.
ARRESTED:
Zachery Teipe Mueller (pictured above), 21, of Evansville. Attempted Murder as aLevel 1 Felony, Aggravated Battery with a Firearm as a Level 3 Felony, Domestic Battery with a Deadly Weapon as a Level 5 Felony, Domestic Battery as a Class A Misdemeanor
Presumption of Innocence Notice: The fact that a person has been arrested or charged with a crime is merely an accusation. The defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty in a court of law.
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Much of the $350 billion in the Small Business Administration’s emergency coronavirus relief fund was effectively spoken for within the first minutes of launch, according to senior banking executives.
“We didn’t even get through the first five minutes of applications,” a JPMorgan Chase senior banking executive said.
The bank received over 60,000 applicants for the Paycheck Protection Program within those first five minutes, a senior executive at Chase said. When funds ran dry after less than two weeks, only 27,000 loans had ultimately been approved, Chase said.
After reports revealed details about which companies had been successful in securing emergency funding, small-business owners across America were angry about having never made their way to the front of the line.
But according to some large lenders, there was no time for a line. The CEO of an independent bank said it was like “a stampede through the eye of a needle.â€
A senior Bank of America executive said that, on the first day alone, the bank received over 10,000 applications per hour. The bank had just “thousands” of those approved by the SBA, CEO Brian Moynihan said during an earnings call last week.
Separately, Wells Fargo said the SBA had approved a total of 1,051 applications for $120 million. Over 170,000 “expressions of interest” were filed with the bank within just the first two days.
The bank had anticipated high demand and requested the lifting of a $10 billion regulatory cap.
More than $18 trillion may be ultimately needed to meet the needs of small-business owners, by one estimate.
Overall, since the emergency fund was “first come, first served,†only small-business owners who got their applications in at the earliest possible moment we’re likely to get funded.
Other banks were also hit by a stampede of demand for the loosely defined program, intended to provide a general relief fund for America’s estimated 30 million small businesses with the assurance from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin that money would be in their bank account within 24 hours.
“You get the money, you’ll get it the same day, you use this to pay your workers. Please bring your workers back to work if you’ve let them go,†Mnuchin said in a news conference the afternoon before the program’s start, even as lenders were awaiting final guidance from the Treasury Department.
For the past two weeks, small-business owners have been checking their emails and calling their bankers and the SBA to check on the status of their application, not knowing that the first phase of the program was over before it barely began.
Shawn O’Day, a disabled retired veteran, owns The O Bar in North Conway, New Hampshire. He believes he was one of the first to apply, and ultimately submitted requests through four separate banks.
“Every several days after not hearing anything, I’d go online and apply through another bank. After a week of this — as we all know, word came back recently all the money dried up,†he said.
“All I was trying to do was support my nine unemployed workers, but have been unsuccessful,” he said. He also received a “friendly reminder on April 10 from my landlord that the rent was due April 1, which is still outstanding,†O’Day said.
Small-business owners have been checking their emails and calling their bank to check on the status of their application, not knowing that the first phase of the program was over before it barely began.
From the very beginning, the fund appeared insufficient to meet the demand. If each one of America’s small businesses had applied, they would each have received about $12,000.
Yet according to new data by Fivestars, a small-business marketing and loyalty platform service, 75 percent of the small- and medium-sized businesses with current mandatory shutdowns that the firm serves to need a $55,000 infusion by May 1 in order to successfully restart when guidelines are lifted.
“Most small businesses on Main Street have a very little runway. From our merchants we know that 75 percent have less than four weeks†of liquidity, said Chris Luo, head of marketing for Fivestars.
An estimated $18 trillion may ultimately be required to meet the needs of small business owners, Howard Mason, head of financial research at Renaissance Macro Research, said in a note to clients last week.
After Wells Fargo stopped taking applications, Matt Fhuere, the owner of a 14-person classic car restoration shop in Salt Lake City, Utah, opened up a new bank account. He waited on hold with the SBA for over three hours multiple times as he applied for several relief programs.
“I paid my accountant $500 to prepare, only to have to fill out their forms, finally get approval, on the same day money ran out,†he said.
“I built this company one dollar at a time,†he said. “Now I’m going to lose everything. The state and government have damaged me more than any virus did.â€
By Victoria Ratliff
TheStatehouseFile.com
INDIANAPOLIS—Dr. Ram Yeleti of Community Health Network stood with Gov. Eric Holcomb and Dr. Kristina Box in early March as together they announced the first case of COVID-19 to be diagnosed in Indiana.
Friday, as he gave Yeleti a chance to share his family’s personal experience with the disease, Holcomb said is extending the statewide lockdown until May 1 because of the highly contagious virus.
Yeleti, in the governor’s daily virtual press briefing, provided a rare, first-hand account of the novel coronavirus and how it can affect people differently. Answering questions from Box, he described about how he contracted a relatively mild form of COVID-19 that left him with a cough and fatigue while his wife, Indira, ended up in a hospital intensive care unit.
Yeleti said his illness began with a scratchy throat and he immediately quarantined himself from the rest of his family. After being tested, his fears were confirmed as test results came back positive.
“It was a little more terrifying than I expected it to be quite honest,†he said.
In spite of his precautions, his wife contracted the disease. Her symptoms were much more severe and included body aches and nausea.
After being rushed to the hospital, his wife was admitted to the hospital and ICU. She underwent treatment using an investigative drug and has since been released from the hospital and is now back at home.
“We just had to do whatever we can,†he said. “There were hundreds of people praying for her and I think that goes a long, long way. Faith and hope and prayer during these times, I just can’t stress enough how important that it.â€
Also Friday, Box provided the daily count of new COVID-19 cases and the number of fatalities—642 new positive ones, bringing the state’s total to 10,154, and 42 additional deaths, with 519 total statewide.
Box provided additional information about positive COVID-19 cases in the state, including the average length of a hospital stay for patients. Of a group of 7,955 COVID-19 positive patients, 2,763 made emergency room visits and 2,026 were hospitalized.
Of those hospitalized, 501 patients were admitted to the ICU. Hospital stays averaged nine days for those who were not admitted to the ICU and 10.4 days to those who were admitted to the ICU.
“We are going to continue to work on getting more data, specifically breaking this down by race and by gender and by ethnicity, and we’ll be able to give that data to you as that comes on board,†she said.
Box also said that 3,718 new patients were tested in a single day, the highest number so far. She said while the reported daily cases are increasing day-to-day, the public shouldn’t be alarmed as plans to reopen the economy begin. That’s because as more people are tested there will be more positive results.
However, some lawmakers say there should be more testing in some parts of the state.
Rep. Mara Candelaria Reardon, D-Munster, sent a letter Friday to Holcomb asking for more tests to be administered in Lake County, the county with the second highest number of cases and deaths, only behind Marion County.
“Though the population of Marion County is twice the size of Lake County, Marion County has conducted four times the amount of COVID-19 tests, leaving vulnerable communities in Lake County suffering as a direct result,†she said in the letter.
She added that widespread testing is the key to safely reopening the economy.
Holcomb has said that Indiana’s economy will gradually be reopened and has asked for input from some of the state’s business sectors about how to do it safely.
Meanwhile, the state’s latest employment statistics were released Friday, showing an unemployment rate of only 3.2%.
That data reflect the state of Indiana’s workforce as of mid-March, just before the worst of the pandemic led to widespread business closures and job losses. Fred Payne, commissioner of the Department of Workforce Development, reported Thursday that the state saw record numbers of unemployment claims over the preceding three weeks.
Payne noted Friday that his department worked overtime to get the system up and running that allows Hoosiers to apply for the supplement unemployment insurance recently approved by the federal government.
Victoria Ratliff is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.
Starting Monday, April 20, access to a portion of the Greenway trail on the downtown riverfront will be temporarily closed for approximately one year for construction of the Sunrise Cascade and Sunrise Overlook.
A construction fence will be installed blocking all access to the south end of the trail near the Greenway turnaround at Sunset Park. Public access to the Greenway will be available from the area behind the Evansville Museum at 411 S.E. Riverside Dr.
The cascade and overlook are part of major improvements underway at the East Wastewater Treatment Plant, including the construction of a pumping station with a pumping capacity of 40 million gallons a day. The Greenway trail will reopen when the Sunrise Pump Station project is complete in 2021.
Click here to see renderings of the Sunrise Pump Station project.Â
