Category Archives: Freedom

Pittsburg coach Victor Galli sounded a little concerned over the phone this week. His team was unable to scrimmage last weekend, not ideal given that its opponent Friday night played a real game.

But when you have a roster as loaded as Pittsburgs, there really is no need to worry, even a little.

In a matchup against Freedom on Friday night, the Bay Area News Groups second-ranked team charged to a 17-point lead in the first seven minutes and cruised to a 59-14 victory on its home field in Bay Valley Athletic League play.

It was a little sloppy at times, but the first game in a year and a half, dont have too much to complain about, Galli said. The little cushion let us play through some mistakes. I am just grateful to be back playing and getting some kind of a season for the seniors. Our next game at home will be a Senior Night.

Galli said he hopes his team gets to the finish line.

The season is going to be over in less than a month. In four weeks, its over, he said. I just want everybody to stay safe and keep social distancing and washing their hands so we can finish this thing.

Matthew Quesadas punt return for a touchdown started the eruption of points. A safety padded the lead to 10-0 and a fumble recovery in the end zone made it 17-0 with 5:17 left in the first quarter. PITTSBURG, CA MARCH 19: Pittsburg Highs Matthew Quesada (11) gets past Freedom Highs Xavier Solis (19) before running a punt return in for a touchdown in the first quarter of their football game in Pittsburg, Calif., on Friday, March 19, 2021. (Doug Duran/Bay Area News Group)

When sophomore Jaden Rashada threw a touchdown pass to Lamont Fortenberry early in the second quarter, Pittsburg led 24-0. Rashada is the younger of the two touted quarterbacks to transfer to Pittsburg since the Pirates last played 15 months ago.

The older half of the duo, senior Eli Brickhandler, threw a touchdown pass later in the quarter as Pittsburg took a 38-7 lead into halftime.

Galli called both players starters this week and said theyd share snaps, which they did. Brickhandler, who played previously at Whitney in Rocklin, made the official start Friday.

Pittsburg led 52-14 after the third quarter and added another touchdown when Rashada threw a 10-yard pass to Will Stallings to widen the gap to 59-14. PITTSBURG, CA MARCH 19: Pittsburg High quarterback Jaden Rashada (5) passes the ball in the third quarter of their football game against Freedom High in Pittsburg, Calif., on Friday, March 19, 2021. (Doug Duran/Bay Area News Group)

Galli said both quarterbacks did some really good things. Obviously, there were some imperfections. But for the most part, we were happy with the way they played and they both know they can do better. But they both had pretty good games and did some really good things.

Freedom, which lost last week to Campolindo 27-23, scored its only first-half points Friday when Les Callen threw a touchdown pass to Vince Nunley. Xavier Solis returned an interception for a touchdown in the second half for the Falcons (0-2).

Originally posted here:

Prep football: Pittsburg shows off its talent, routs Freedom - East Bay Times

by Robert W. Frizzell

Robert W. Frizzell is the author of Independent Immigrants: A Settlement of Hanoverian Germans in Western Missouri (Univ. of Missouri Press, 2007).

Civil War Memorial, Jacksonville, Illinois the hometown of historian and essayist Steven Hochstadt

This is not a book about freedom of the press, but rather the author sees it as an example of freedom of the press. The bulk of the book consists of selected weekly columns or that ran in the Journal-Courier of Jacksonville, Illinois between November, 2009 and October, 2018. They are supplemented by pieces the author wrote for a list of friends and associates both before the start date and after the closing date. Each piece is given a short introduction. This is liberal opinion published by a conservative small-town newspaper. Steve Hochstadt is a Jew who grew up in a middle-class suburb on Long Island, New York. He taught history at Bates College in Maine before moving to Illinois College in Jacksonville in rural Illinois. The author seems surprised that he was able to publish his liberal opinions in conservative rural Illinois for nine years. Although he received written expressions of distaste, he was never verbally abused or threatened when he ventured out in this small community.

Yet, at the same time, he admits that he was nave in supposing that he could change public opinion by stating a few facts each week in the newspaper. That does not seem to have worked. Morgan County, of which Jacksonville is the county seat, voted 62 to 65 percent Republican for president in every election 2004-2020, with one exception. In 2008, John McCain carried Morgan County by less than one per cent. I wish the author had speculated as to why.

Hochstadt did pull his punches somewhat in the published columns. The introductions and non-published pieces contain more sharply negative assessments of conservative (and Republican) policies and points of view. He also wrote rather often about non-political subjectsfamily holidays, gardening, dogs, the seasons, and sports figures, especially Jackie Robinson and Mohammed Ali.

The author is an honest, decent, fair-minded, generous, reasonable, and charitable man. He sees himself as an outsider in America, in part because his father as a Jew had to flee Vienna, Austria in 1938 to avoid the Nazis. He has published on the history of the Holocaust in which he, of course, lost family members. The threat of tribalism in every human society is never far from his consciousness.

He asserts that My lifetime of opinions depends on the crapshoot of birth, the chance of geography, and the idiosyncrasies of family life. (p. 118) How is it then, that the reviewer, of mostly German Protestant descent and raised on a financially precarious western Missouri hog farm, agrees with him on almost every topic he chooses to discuss. When Hochstadt asserts that Political economy is what I care about. (p. 381), and When Republicans turn their evil eye on the poor, I get sick. (p.214), Im right there beside him as I am on climate change, gun control, respect for science, regulation of business, voting rights, health care, racism, anti-Zionism and the many other topics he addresses. Only in love for sports and dogs do our opinions differ. I suffered a great deal of shame for my klutziness on the school athletic field, and the family dog attacked me when I was about 12.

We do share similar experiences. I am only a single year older than Hochstadt and we are both professionally trained in history. My father, too, had to leave the world he loved best as economic trends forced him off his small family farm when I was in high school. So I, too, have been the skeptical outsider when listening to American corporate capitalisms promises of plenty. We both faced the Vietnam era draft, although I was drafted, and he escaped with a high lottery number. Yet all this is not enough to satisfactorily explain our political similaritynot enough for me nor for the reader either, one suspects.

Reading this book allows one to review many of the most common political concerns liberals have had over the last dozen years. One likes to have ones point of view reinforced. But I cannot share the authors optimism about amelioration. Wish that I could!

Still, in this age of extreme political partisanship, one enjoys reading the musings of such a thoughtful and decent maneven one of firm political opinions.

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"Freedom of the Press in Small-Town America" - History News Network (HNN)

"Free speech is an aberration." So begins a magisterial 2016 essay by David Bromwich in the London Review of Books. Its social or political enshrinement is the exception, not the rule; everywhere, censorship and its primordial revulsion from blasphemy stalk the perimeters of acceptable speech. (In adumbrating the connection between blasphemy and censorship, Bromwich relies on the legal scholar Leonard Levy's Blasphemy: Verbal Offense Against the Sacred, From Moses to Salman Rushdie.) Nevertheless, Bromwich goes on to say, "The freedom to speak ones mind is a physical necessity, not a political and intellectual piece of good luck; to a thinking person, the need seems to be almost as natural as breathing."

The claim is historical. The type of person for whom free speech feels like a physical need appeared at a certain time and place, enabled by certain kinds of institutions including, in our time, the university. According to Keith Whittington, today those institutions must be reminded of commitments they've let lapse. As Whittington, the chair of the academic committee of the newly founded Academic Freedom Alliance, explains to Academe's blog, "I suppose the Steven Salaita episode at the University of Illinois was a wake-up call to me on how likely universities were to cave under pressure when faculty speech became the source of a public controversy." (And at the Review, Wesley Yang broke the story of the AFA's founding.)

Not everyone is convinced that organizations like the AFA are necessary. In her essay for this week's Review, Jennifer Ruth argues that, while "we must support the academic freedom of people we disagree with," such groups are stalking horses for the politics of the conservative donor class. She describes an ugly incident at her own institution, Portland State University, in which, as she puts it, two professors "outsourc[ed] the harassment of a colleague" to a mob of online trolls. Other say that the real threat comes not from campus activists but from conservative state governments, which, as our Nell Gluckman describes, seem increasingly willing to interfere in university curricula. (For his part, Whittington, of the AFA, lists "state legislatures considering proposals to restrict what can be taught in a college classroom" as an area of concern.)

The smoke of the culture wars risks obscuring some real differences in principle. As Salaita explained a couple of years ago in "My Life as a Cautionary Tale," "I do question the wisdom of allowing a civil liberty to dominate notions of freedom." On this view, free speech (as expressed in the institution of academic freedom) achieves a range of positive goods (it "preserves democracy," "emboldens research," and "facilitates faculty governance") but should not be seen as an end in itself. Bromwich's "thinking person," for whom "the freedom to speak one's mind is a physical necessity," would presumably disagree. These are fundamental problems; they will not evaporate with the passing of the current campus dust-ups.

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The Review: Cancel Culture; Academic Freedom; and Bullies - The Chronicle of Higher Education

19 March 2021

If more than 250,000 people write FREEDOM in response to a question about religion on the 2021 census it will become a recognised belief system.

This is incorrect. There is no specific number people have to reach to get a census output. To add a new protected characteristic to the Equality Act 2010 you have to bring a legal claim and win in a court of employment tribunal.

Some social media posts shared hundreds of times claim that if more than 250,000 people respond to a question about religious belief on the 2021 census with the answer FREEDOM, it will become a recognised belief system or recognised UK belief.

This is incorrect. The number of respondents writing the same answer has no effect on how a belief is recognised by the government.

One of the posts, written by Save Our Rights UK and shared on social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Telegram, calls on people to write FREEDOM in answer to a question on the 2021 census, which officially takes place in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, on Sunday, 21 March.

It goes on to claim: If over 250k people put the same thing in that box [about religion] on the census then it becomes a recognised belief system and to ask us to do something that goes against it could be a crime under the Equalities Act 2010.

The post continues: It could help us in future with immunity passports, mandations and so on. It is of course no guarantee and may need to be fought in court at least once to get the full benefit of the protection it could offer.

It is not true that a group of 250,000 people giving the same answer on the census automatically becomes a recognised belief system. It is not even true that they would automatically be reported as a census output, which is a statistic produced afterwards by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in England and Wales.

Full Fact asked the ONS about this. It told us: There is no specific number people have to reach to get a census output.

The populations to be included in the scope of our outputs will take account of user needs identified in that consultation, alongside the need to ensure that outputs remain non-disclosive (meaning that the information cannot be used to identify individuals).

If Save Our Rights UK are to successfully identify FREEDOM as a new belief stated in the census, they will then have to go to what the ONS calls a stakeholder outputs consultation later this year.

Under the Equality Act 2010 it is unlawful to discriminate against someone because they do or dont belong to a particular religion, or do or dont hold a particular philosophical belief.

Full Fact asked the Government Equalities Office (GEO) how these beliefs are legally established.

A Government Equality Hub spokesperson told us: To add anything to a protected characteristic or a completely new one to the Equality Act 2010 you have to bring a legal claim and win in a court of employment tribunal.

The criteria applied by courts for deciding whether a belief qualifies for protection are

However, it need not allude to a fully-fledged system of thought; in other words, it does not need to be an -ism, and it need not be shared by others.

We emailed Save Our Rights UK to ask for the sources behind their claim, but did not receive a response.

This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about thisand find out how to report Facebook contenthere. For the purposes of that scheme, weve rated this claim as partly false because it is incorrect that a belief system can become recognised just based on the number of people responding to the census.

Link:

Saying your religion is 'Freedom' on the census won't make it a recognised belief - Full Fact

Wearable devices can help track the spread of COVID-19 in places where smartphone use isnt possible

Joe Masoodi, Ryerson University

In February, the Ontario government announced it had invested $2.5 million in wearable contact tracing technology to help curb the spread of coronavirus. The funds will be directed to Facedrive Inc., a Toronto-based company, to accelerate the production of its contact tracing wristbands worn by essential workers.

These wristbands are being tested and considered for wide use in long-term care homes, a First Nation community, airlines, schools and construction sites. They work by communicating with other devices through a combination of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, sending an alert to any employee who has been in close contact with somebody who has tested positive for the virus. The wristbands also enforce social distancing by vibrating or beeping whenever they are within two metres of each other.

Contact tracing technologies

During the early stages of the pandemic, governments around the world repurposed new and pre-existing technologies in efforts to track, monitor and contain the spread of the virus. Many privacy experts and surveillance scholars feared the expansion of government and corporate surveillance, pointing out the long-term implications for privacy rights, civil liberties and democracy. Contact tracing apps were one of these innovations.

Eager for life to return to normal, a little over half (56 per cent) of Canadians revealed they were willing to use a contact tracing app. Fast forward to today, it remains unclear whether COVID Alert, Canadas contact tracing app, has been effective in curbing the spread of the coronavirus. As for contact tracing wearable devices, the effectiveness also remains up in the air.

Discriminatory applications

The allure of technologies often overshadows the immediate and long-term social, political and ethical implications that Canadians and policymakers need to be aware of.

As someone who has researched surveillance and its histories, the current government proposal is unsettling due to the places and people it targets.

Data shows that workplaces deemed essential services are characterized by highly racialized labour forces; the introduction of surveillance technologies like a wearable bracelet will disproportionately target vulnerable groups who have historically been subjected to disparate forms of surveillance and discrimination. The policy may not only fail to slow the spread of the virus but may actually perpetuate historical legacies of discrimination against vulnerable populations including racialized and low-income groups.

There is also potential for discrimination and bias as a result of the visibility of the devices. More than just an item around the wrist, the device broadcasts a personal decision: to opt-in or opt-out of contact tracing. At the same time, it may act as an identifying symbol for a particular labour force.

Ensuring privacy

Before the COVID Alert app was launched in Ontario in July 2020, federal and provincial governments worked together in consultation with privacy bodies, while independent researchers and experts also offered recommendations. I, and others on our team, made recommendations to enhance COVID Alerts privacy and security standards, many of which were implemented. Many lauded the app for its privacy-preserving and data security protections. Yet Ontarios recent decision to invest in wearable contact tracing devices did not receive the same extensive level of public consultation, raising concerns over transparency, privacy and data security.

In a privacy white paper co-authored with the law firm McCarthy Ttrault LLP available only upon request, making it a challenge for researchers to review Facedrive claims to have followed Canadian privacy guidelines. But Canadian privacy laws have been largely criticized for being outdated and are not an adequate benchmark for judging a piece of technologys threat to privacy.

Current privacy laws have been criticized for not clearly defining concepts like personal information, allowing tech companies to claim compliance while exploiting ambiguities in the law. Facedrive claims that their wearables do not contain any personal information since employee names are mapped with wearable serial numbers and stored on a centralized Microsoft Azure server. Yet the name of the employee whose test is positive and the names of those they interacted with are still available and revealed to employers on an online dashboard.

Further complicating matters, once an employer is logged in to the dashboard, not only are they able to see who has been in contact with whom, theyre also able to assess individual employee risk levels for virus exposure and manually send notifications if they suspect transmission. This means that employers are provided with what is essentially health data, while also taking up the public health role of contact tracer. This raises further questions about employee privacy rights, data security and the ethics of workplace surveillance.

Threats to democracy

Without critical examination and debate, such surveillance practices will have serious implications for civil liberties, especially the rights to privacy, freedom from discrimination and autonomy. The deployment of contact tracing wearables in workplaces will normalize surveillance and lead to its expansion Facedrive has already indicated its interest in continuing the use of its technologies beyond the pandemic.

Wearable contact tracing devices and the data they collect can threaten our rights, freedoms and even democracy itself. It is vital for the general public, employers and policy-makers to think carefully about the limitations and implications of wearable tracking devices including the ways in which they use, collect and store data as well as how such surveillance operations will dissemble after the pandemic and not be overcome by the technological fanfare.

Joe Masoodi, Policy Analyst, Ryerson Leadership Lab, Ryerson University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Do wearable contact tracing devices threaten freedom and privacy? - KitchenerToday.com

Mayor Wheeler echoes concerns of local businesses losing money

by: KOIN 6 News Staff

Destruction to Pearl District businesses on March 13, 2021 in the Pearl District (PPB)

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) Some business owners in downtown Portlands Pearl District are pleading for an end to continued property damage and violence surrounding their stores.

Two small business ownersboth of whom requested to maintain anonymitytold the Portland City Council Wednesday the financial damage has been overwhelming. They added the vandalism does nothing for social justice.

We all know this isnt freedom of speech, said a woman named Lisa who owns a small business in the Pearl District. This is pure freedom of hate and destruction. We, small business owners, are not wealthy people. We do not have an instant ATM from which we can repeatedly take money out to pay to have plywood boards put up then taken down, remove graffiti, replace broken glass doors, glass windows, et cetera.

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler echoed the frustration and anger of business owners. He said the local retailers and restaurants were the ones being hurt, not the faceless large corporations.

On Friday, March 12, 13 people were arrested and roughly 100 in total were detained after a march ended in widespread vandalism and criminal activity. Some in the group had smashed windows to several businesses leading officers to create a perimeter around the crowd.

Some of the protesters also confronted the police, throwing rocks and full cans of beer, according to PPB. Officers reported using pepper spray. Two of the 13 people arrested were suspects carrying firearms, wearing body armor and helmets, according to police.

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Freedom of hate and destruction: Downtown businesses sound off on violence - KOIN.com

Free speech advocates have long believed that suing a news organization threatens free speech. Democracy needs a press to be free to report, without fear or favor, the facts as it sees them.

But two recent legal actions against news organizations indicate that the First Amendment provides sufficient free speech protection, even when punishing lawsuits are filed against the press.

Falsehoods have flooded public discourse in recent years through outlets including talk radio, cable TV channels and social media such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit and Instagram. The proliferation of these falsehoods has seemingly normalized the practice of spreading lies.

Earlier this year Smartmatic, a little-known voter technology firm, sued cable channel Fox News for US$2.7 billion alleging defamation for baseless reports of fraud in the November 2020 election. One day later Fox News canceled Lou Dobbs Tonight, a program hosted by a staunch supporter of Donald Trump and repeater of his false assertions of voter fraud. Fox even broadcast fact-checking reports debunking its own anchors false claims about electoral fraud.

Smartmatic also threatened to sue another news outlet, Newsmax, for large sums unless it retracted defamatory statements that claimed Smartmatic software was used to change votes cast in the presidential election. Newsmax backpedaled by publishing the retraction that No evidence has been offered that Smartmatic used software or reprogrammed software that manipulated votes in the 2020 election.

So, does the fear of losing money in a lawsuit dictate what news organizations will report and what they wont?

No. As a former journalist and now scholar and practitioner of media law, I believe there are enough safeguards built into First Amendment jurisprudence to shut down liars and still protect robust debate of opposing viewpoints in America.

In a landmark First Amendment case almost 60 years ago, New York Times v. Sullivan, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that in the rush to gather and disseminate news, it is understandable that a news reporter may miss an important fact or interpret something wrong. Because preserving a free and robust exchange of ideas is vital to democracy, the court said it is worth the risk that some falsehoods may mistakenly be printed, and the press shouldnt be punished for it.

Thus, when a well-known person or company brings a defamation suit against a news organization, they must have a very strong case or they will lose. Defamation law heavily favors a media defendant.

To win, it is not enough to prove the news outlet published falsehoods, even if the plaintiff suffered significant damage to their reputation. Plaintiffs must prove the news organization published information even with the knowledge that [a statement made] was false or with reckless disregard for the truth.

Realistically, it means it is not worth suing a broadcaster or newspaper for defamation unless the lie is egregious, the damage to reputation is severe and the evidence of the news organizations intention or recklessness in publishing the story is practically undeniable.

That is a steep hill for plaintiffs to climb.

But courts draw the line when a news organization publishes untruths that could have been adequately checked for accuracy, but reporters or editors carelessly or knowingly shirked their duty to do so.

That is the linchpin of Smartmatics claim against Fox News. The lawsuit states Trump lawyers Rudolph Giuliani and Sidney Powell made the case for election fraud for weeks as frequent guests on Fox programs, but rather than fact-check those false claims, the lawsuit alleges, Fox joined the conspiracy to defame and disparage Smartmatic and its election technology and software.

When Giuliani and Powell were asked to produce actual evidence of voting fraud involving the company, none was forthcoming, but Fox published their claims anyway. And Smartmatic sent the network a letter before the lawsuit was filed asking it to issue a full and complete retraction of all false and defamatory statements and reports. In response, the network aired several times an interview with a voting technology expert who debunked the claims of fraud, but it is not clear whether a two-and-a-half-minute interview was enough to undo months of broadcasting inflammatory and baseless claims of election fraud.

Several legal experts believe Smartmatics lawsuit could be successful.

Free speech advocates may complain that disgruntled plaintiffs sometimes sue not because information reported about them is untrue, but rather to silence a news outlet that they know cannot afford to defend the lawsuit.

[Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversations newsletter to understand the world. Sign up today.]

But there is a legal remedy for this, too. The District of Columbia and 30 states have laws, called anti-SLAPP statutes SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation that allow a defendant to get a case dismissed early in litigation and get paid attorneys fees and costs if the published speech is true and a plaintiff is suing just to silence the publisher.

It is an effective tool journalism organizations can use to defend themselves against bullying plaintiffs. Depending on the state, the effectiveness of anti-SLAPP statutes and who is allowed to assert them can vary.

Suing over illegal speech is a slow and expensive process. Nevertheless, defamation suits lodged against Fox News and threatened against Newsmax for false reports of fraud in the November 2020 election managed to quickly curtail misinformation spread by news networks, where years of excoriating criticism by public pressure campaigns and advertising boycotts did not.

It is enough to prompt First Amendment advocates to rethink whether defamation lawsuits may be a valuable tool to protect rather than a scourge that hinders the dissemination of free speech and truth in American discourse.

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Why lawsuits against the media may not hurt freedom of the press - The Conversation US

With cataracts in his eyes and difficulty in breathing, the frail 70-year-old man was toiling to bark logs with his axe in a sawmill of Domar upazila town.

Asked why he still has to work at this age, Nripendra Nath Roy alias Sinial said he has six mouths to feed and he cannot look away from them when they need him.

Likewise, when the country needed him 50 years ago, he took up arms and fought in different battles under Sector 6 until the country was free from the enemy.

As a means to honour the sons of the soil and to recognise their services for the country, the government has been disbursing monthly allowance for them every month.

However, valiant freedom fighter Nripendra, who fought in Burimari, Lalmonirhat and Nilphamari, has been deprived of the much-needed allowance due to a couple of callous errors made during the process of issuing his national identity (NID) card in 2008.

Not only his birth date was erroneously changed to 1960, instead of 1951, his alias, Sinial, was added next to his full name on the NID.

For the next seven years -- from 2008 to 2015 -- the elderly man tried in vain to get the error corrected despite spending countless hours during numerous visits at the Election Commission offices in Domar upazila and Nilphamari.

Ilius Hossain, former deputy commander of Muktijoddha Sangsad's Domar unit, said, "Nripendra Nath is a genuine freedom fighter as his name is included in the freedom fighters' list, compiled in India in 1971, which is accepted by all quarters. And this needs no further verification."

"My year of birth is 1951... My name is correctly mentioned as Nripendra Nath Roy in the Indian list, under serial number 37429," Nripendra said.

"But in the NID card prepared in 2008, the callous enumerators put down Sinial, my nickname, as part of my full name. On top of that, they entered my birth year as 1960, which is incorrect. These mistakes have had disastrous effects on my life," the war veteran said frustratingly.

In 2017, after the government launched a verification of the freedom fighters' list, Nripendra turned in necessary documents -- including a copy of the freedom fighters' list, compiled by Indian authorities in 1971, and recommendation letters from his co-fighters and from the committee tasked with the verification of freedom fighters' list in the upazila -- to Jatiya Muktijoddha Council (National Freedom Fighters' Council).

The Council, four years later, is yet to make a decision on the case of Nripendra, who was an active freedom fighter under the command of Capt Iqbal, sub-sector commander of Sector 6.

Domar unit Muktijoddha Sangsad's former commander Mohammad Nurunnabi said, "All of us consider him to be a real freedom fighter and he should get the recognition."

Contacted, Domar Upazila Nirbahi Officer Shahina Shabnam said, "We are considering the case with sincerity and we await the decision of Jatiya Muktijoddha Council."

Nripendra is originally from Chowki Bhajini village in Debiganj upazila of Panchagarh. He later became a permanent resident of his wife's native home at Pashchim Boragari Bagdokra village of Domar upazila in Nilphamari.

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Freedom fighter toils away without recognition - The Daily Star

Just after opening a new vintage ice cream parlor in a Crown Point strip mall, Dairy Belle will soon open its sixth location in Dyer.

The 71-year-old Region institution, which has been serving scoops since it started in Hammond in 1950, is opening next to Pop's on U.S. 30 in Dyer, about three miles west of its existing location on U.S. 30 in Schererville.

TheColao family, owner of Dairy Belle, is friends with Pop's owners, which led them to open next to Pop's Italian beef restaurants in Crown Point and now Dyer, Natalie Colao said.

The new ice cream parlor in Dyer will be around 1,800-square-feet with indoor seating, an outdoor patio and a drive-thru. It will be the first Dairy Belle to occupy a newly constructed location, and it will be open year-round.

"They're ready to break ground," Colao said. "Assuming everything goes as projected, it should be open mid-summer."

The goal is to have the ice cream shop open by mid-June, in the midst of the busy season.

Dairy Belle will serve familiar favorites like soft serve ice cream, Dole Whip pineapple, sundaes, malts, flurries, shakes and build-your-own banana splits.

"It will be the same menu as the other location," Natalie Colao said.

Both businesses could benefit from being so close to each other, Colao said. People could grab a dinner of Italian sausage, gyros or Reuben sandwiches at Pop's and then swing by Dairy Belle for dessert.

"We have lines down the street on U.S. 30," she said. "They do well at that Dyer location and get lines down the street on U.S. 30. We're not sure exactly what to expect. They might need to put in a stop light."

The new Dyer location should draw from a wide area, including south suburban Illinois and Munster.

"We've gotten questions from customers about whether it will take away from our Schererville location," she said. "But our Schererville location draws from Schererville, Merrillville and Hobart. This should attract more people from Dyer and St. John."

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Family Express acquires six Freedom Oil stores, another station in McCordsville - The Times of Northwest Indiana

The vehicle here is known as the 2021 Play from none other than Roadtrek. Dont know this team? Well, the brand has officially been around since 1980, but its conception began in 1974 when Jac Hanemaayer decided to create his own motorhome vehicles. In 2019, the Roadtrek brand was acquired by Groupe Rapido in order to continue producing vehicles like the Play.

To kick things off, the wonderyou see is built on a Ram ProMaster 3500 extended van chassis with an automatic 6-speed transmission. This 3.6-liter, V6, 24-valve engine cranks out 280 hp (283 PS) and 260 lb-ft (352 Nm) of torque @ 6400 RPM. Think you need any more to lug around the GCWR of 11,500 lb (5,216 kg)? Didn't think so.

An exterior length of 20.75 ft (6.32 m), width of 6.92 ft (2.11 m)), and height, with roof AC, of 9.42 ft (2.87 m), give way to an interior that allows for 6.2 ft (1.88 m) of headroom and filled with more than enough features to live life on the road until restrictions are lifted.

Waterworks are handled by a 37-gallon (140-liter) freshwater tank, a 14-gallon (53-liter) gray water tank, and finally an 8.5-gallon (32-liter) black water tank, will aid the needs for three permanent guests.

One thing that sets the Play apart from other vehicles in its class, is the lack of an excessive number of floorplans; only one option exists for this camper. Frankly, you dont need to offer your customers more than one floorplan if its versatile enough to match any needs that may arise during the journey.

The kitchen is equipped with more than the necessaryequipment needed to cook a five-star meal and includes a microwave oven, two-burner recessed propane stovetop, and sink with faucet. A flip-up counter extension, slide-out pantry, and large pot and pan drawer are sure to meet your meal-plan needs.

For sleeping, two twin beds can be found at the rear. These can be kept separate, for example, if traveling with a friend, or can be combined to form a king, if traveling with your partner. A king bed is usually suitable for up to three folks, but if you dont want to feel cramped, an optional feature transforms the two front seats into an extra single bed. The bathroom is a fully enclosed system with marine toilet, sink, and shower. Nothing too fancy, but inclusive of everything you need.

Several other features like a 12-volt macerator sewage pump and gravity dump, power inverter, 400 AGM battery system, and monitor panel for these features, is also found. Even though the manufacturers website shows only a couple of optional features, theyll probably be more than happy to work out whatever other needs you may have. Heck, for a $104,986 starting MSRP, they better be.

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2021 RoadTrek Play Camper Van Unleashes Freedom and Comfort Into the Wild - autoevolution