Latest news with #DeVos
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Change of venue granted for embattled Madison County Treasurer, upcoming trial moved to Boone County
WINTERSET, Iowa – The upcoming trial against embattled Madison County Treasurer Amanda DeVos, 37, has been moved to Boone County. Hours after delaying a trial hearing on May 19, an attorney for DeVos filed a motion for a change of venue, citing 'extensive media coverage and publicity' following her late January arrest for alleged Felonious Misconduct in Office, Tampering with Records, Fraudulent Practice in the third degree, and third-degree Theft. Motion-for-Change-of-Venue-250519-DeVosDownload The motion was granted on Thursday, with the new venue set for Boone County, about an hour from the courthouse in Winterset where the trial had originally been planned. A trial date for the criminal case had not been officially filed, according to court records. DeVos has been free from jail since posting a $5,000 surety bond shortly after she was arrested for allegedly using her access as county treasurer to alter government records to make it look like she paid for her vehicle registration plates when she had not. DeVos pleaded not guilty. Roughly three weeks later, the Polk County Sheriff's Office announced additional charges were pending against DeVos for an entirely different criminal scenario allegedly involving her property taxes. DeVos is represented by Timothy McCarthy, II, of McCarthy & Hamrock. Her application for a public defender had been denied due to an incomplete application form because she did not disclose what her income was, according to court records. Devos was making $78,787.13 after getting a 3.57% raise, according to online public records posted by the Iowa State Association of Counties. DeVos waived her right to a preliminary hearing in February, around the same time she was temporarily relieved of her duties by the Madison County Board of Supervisors. A new treasurer was appointed. However, due to her position as an elected official, the BOS does not have the power to officially remove DeVos from office, and she was reportedly still collecting her salary and county-supplied benefits for months after her arrest. According to County Attorney Stephen Swanson, DeVos had refused to resign from the position, which forced him to file a Ch. 66 petition in April to have her forcefully removed from the office. He also petitioned for an injunction that would prohibit her from being paid by the county. A judge granted the pause on her salary payments. A Trial Scheduling Conference in that case is scheduled for July 18 at 9 a.m. in Madison County. DeVos has not been charged in connection with the apparent mishandling of county funds, which appears to have plagued nearly every municipality and school district in Madison County. After her arrest, WHO 13 confirmed the City of Winterset received more than $250,000 in funds due for other municipalities and discovered that late property tax payments to the Winterset Community School District forced it to withdraw funds from investment opportunities to cover payroll multiple times. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Ex-RNC chair Ronna McDaniel joins political group backed by DeVos family
WASHINGTON — Former Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel is set to return to the political realm after being tapped to lead the Michigan Forward Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening the Republican Party in the battleground state. McDaniel, the niece of former Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, will serve as the organization's CEO, according to The Wall Street Journal. The newly created nonprofit, funded in part by the powerful DeVos family, will focus its resources on making Michigan 'reliably red,' McDaniel said. 'We need to become a state like Ohio,' McDaniel told the outlet. McDaniel's hiring comes as Republicans turn their attention to the battleground state ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, especially as the party seeks to flip control of the open Senate seat. The Michigan Senate race is one of just two toss-up races next November and is expected to be one of the most competitive elections. There are also a handful of competitive House seats Republicans must defend next year in order to maintain their slim majority in the lower chamber. The position will be McDaniel's first major position since stepping down as the RNC leader last year amid a pressure campaign from Donald Trump and his allies. McDaniel had fallen out of favor with the then-Republican candidate because of her efforts to facilitate debates between him and the other presidential candidates despite Trump's refusal to participate. McDaniel also drew ire from some Republicans after a weaker-than-expected performance from Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections as Democrats outperformed initial expectations. The Michigan Forward Network will be funded largely by the billionaire DeVos family, who are expected to pour millions of dollars into the organization and the 2026 midterm elections. 'I love my home state, and if you care about Michigan's future, you cannot sit idly by and watch its decline,' Dick DeVos said in a statement. 'The Michigan Forward Network is committed to delivering the leadership and policies we need to turn things around.' The DeVos family has long involved itself in Michigan politics, reportedly spending more than $80 million over the last two decades on state races.
CNN
02-06-2025
- General
- CNN
Texas girl thriving after fish skin helped heal her wound as a preemie: ‘I call her my little mermaid'
Children's healthFacebookTweetLink Follow When Krystal DeVos watches her young daughter, Eliana, play with an Ariel doll, her eyes fill with emotion. 'I call her my little mermaid,' DeVos said of her daughter. Shortly after Eliana was born, it was the healing power of fish skin that helped her recover from a deep wound on her neck. 'Eliana actually has no idea,' said DeVos, who lives in Corpus Christi, Texas. 'Of course, as she gets older, we do want to go back and show her pictures and explain to her what has happened, because it is a part of her story and it's so unique.' Eliana's story began about three years ago, when she was born at 23 weeks gestation, weighing a single pound. She spent 131 days in neonatal intensive care units, during which she developed a life-threatening infection on her neck that caused a severe wound. 'It was almost like a flesh-eating disease, where her body was targeting something there in her neck,' DeVos said. As the infection grew, Eliana developed sepsis, the body's extreme response to an infection, causing some of her organs to shut down. Day after day, DeVos and her family consistently prayed for Eliana to recover. Then the medical team told her about a surprising treatment option. On day 86 of her NICU stay, Eliana was transferred from her local general hospital to Driscoll Children's Hospital in Corpus Christi. She received several medications to treat the infection at both hospitals, including antibiotic therapy. But it was at Driscoll that fish skin became a novel part of her wound care. 'It's microscopically so close to human skin that it helps the wound start to heal,' said Dr. Vanessa Dimas, a pediatric plastic surgeon at Driscoll who treated Eliana. When Dimas first met Eliana, she knew that she would need to do two things: remove the buildup of dead skin tissue from the wound and cover it with some type of treatment to help healthy tissue grow back. But the more traditional approaches – like surgery or a human skin graft – were either too risky or not feasible for a preterm infant like Eliana. Her condition was too fragile. 'She was a premature baby, the wound was very extensive, and she was pretty sick, so I did not feel like it was safe to do a surgical procedure on her,' Dimas said. Instead, Dimas and her colleague Roxana Reyna, a wound ostomy nurse practitioner at Driscoll, used a medical-grade honey solution to clean out the wound. Then they applied a mixture of that honey with fish skin to cover the area. The fish skin – a medical product made from wild North Atlantic cod and manufactured by the Icelandic company Kerecis – provided a scaffold, or a type of platform, for new skin tissue to grow. Some of the omega oils and other natural elements from the fish skin helped contribute to the healing process, Dimas said, adding that 'once it basically does its job, helping the wound heal, then it sort of just melts away.' Potential risks of this fish skin treatment include reactions in children with fish allergies; for infants, it may not be known whether they have an allergy at all. 'That would be the biggest risk: an unknown allergy that could potentially cause some problems,' Dimas said. 'Other than that, there's still a chance that the kid may need surgery, because we don't know how much this is going to help us heal the child.' But for Eliana, the fish skin treatment was well-tolerated and appeared to promote healing. Fish skin has been used for wound care in people around the world, but its use in children – let alone infants – remains rare. In March, Dimas and Reyna presented data about their approach for preterm infants at the European Wound Management Association Conference in Barcelona, Spain. They talked about two case studies: Eliana and a critically ill preterm baby with an abdominal wound. 'Eliana weighed 3 pounds on the day we applied the fish skin graft,' Reyna said. The other patient weighed 1 pound during their treatment. 'Since Eliana, now we have been able to feel confident enough to use it in even smaller babies,' Reyna said. Driscoll Children's Hospital says Eliana's care team appears to be the first to implement Kerecis fish skin in wound care for a single-pound preterm baby. Reyna and Dimas have been recognized for their work, and because of their innovative use of the product, Kerecis has invited them to share their clinical insights in public forums. The concept of using fish skin to help heal damaged tissue in humans has been around for years, but it's still not a very common practice, said Dr. Arun Gosain, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Section on Plastic Surgery and division head of plastic surgery at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago. 'There are so many different options' for wound treatment, depending on the depth and severity of the wound, he said. Some approaches involve tissue from other types of animals. 'There are other forms of what we call xenografts, or taking tissue from another species and using it for wound healing,' said Gosain, who was not involved in Eliana's case. For instance, skin from pigs has been commonly used in wound care, as well as collagen from cattle. 'Xenografts may have potential in the future, but they're not used for skin replacement. It's only used for a biologic dressing currently,' he said. Biologic dressings help to temporarily cover wounds and support the natural healing process, essentially aiding in either the wound healing on its own or preparing it for a surgical treatment to close it. For example, someone who has a 'full-thickness wound' – meaning it extends through all three layers of the skin – that isn't healing on its own could benefit from some type of temporary biologic dressing, Gosain said. In that scenario, 'I could use pig skin,' he said. 'We would put that on there as a biologic dressing, realizing that it won't regenerate skin, but it will keep the wound clean until we're ready to transfer the patient's own skin, in some form, to close the wound, whether it be a skin graft or other such thing.' In their case study, Reyna and Dimas described Eliana as having a 'full-thickness wound,' but after three days of the fish skin treatment, they noted 'dramatic results.' They continued to change her dressing every three days, and after the wound was cleaned and dead skin tissue had been removed, it healed in 10 days after the first fish skin mixture was applied, with minimal scarring, according to the study. 'There were no adverse reactions, and additional surgical interventions were unnecessary,' they wrote. Three years later, Eliana's scar is so faint, it's barely noticeable. DeVos said she was inspired by watching fish skin promote the healing of her daughter's wound, and she hopes Eliana's story can help contribute to the world's understanding of fish skin as a medical tool. 'What I hope people take away is that we can be grateful for modern medicine and the power of faith,' she said. 'Never be fearful to try something new. Always be open-minded and just have faith,' she said. 'If something sounds different or you've never been exposed to it before, just take a chance and have a little faith. And in our case, it worked out really great.'
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Campine offers to acquire Ecobat's French battery recycling factories
Regulated information - Inside information – May 28th 2025 – 08:30 Campine NV, metals recycling and specialty chemicals company from Beerse, Belgium and listed on Euronext Brussels provided Ecobat Resources a binding offer on May 27th to acquire the shares of Ecobat's French subsidiaries: 2 battery recycling plants and 1 semi-finished lead speciality manufacturing unit. With this project, Campine aims to continue its expansion in the European circular economy. The deal would comprise the recycling facilities in Bazoches-les-Gallerandes (100 km south of Paris) and Pont Sainte Maxence (50 km north of Paris), which would add 70.000 tons of battery recycling capacity resulting in 40.000 tons of lead-metal alloys. A 3rd factory, producing semi-finished lead products located in Estrees St Denis (north of Paris) is an integrated downstream operation making amongst others anodes for the Zinc and Copper industries. The contemplated transaction is subject to the information and consultation of the works councils of Ecobat Resources affiliates in France and subject to customary merger control and FDI approvals. The closing could be expected earliest in July. The consolidated revenue of the French target assets amounted to about 100 M€ in 2024 and generated a positive EBITDA. Campine expects to sustain these revenues and implement synergies to optimise profits after the acquisition. 'The Ecobat assets are really complementary to Campine's French operations', Campine's CEO De Vos says. 'Ecobat France has free available smelting capacity, while Campine's French operations have abundant material in over supply. With this transaction, we would also avoid the complex permitting process of expanding our smelting capacity in Belgium. We would have it 'immediately'' he adds. The deal would also expand Campine's Metals Recovery capacity: 'The furnaces in France can be used in the supply and process chain to recover antimony and other metals, which fits perfectly in our multi material recycling set-up' David Wijmans, division director Circular Metals at Campine adds. Campine has the intention to maintain employment in the 3 factories and plans investments to implement synergies and improvements. Ecobat's Li-ion collection activities and new lead-acid-battery distribution and sales in France are not part of the transaction. For further information you can contact Karin Leysen (tel. no +32 14 60 15 49)(email: Attachment 250528 Ecobat Finaal engSign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Campine expects a substantial surge in profits in 2025 due to the rise in demand for its antimony products.
Regulated information – Inside information - May 28th 2025 – 08:00 Campine NV, metals recycling and specialty chemicals company from Beerse, Belgium and listed on Euronext Brussels expects substantially higher profits for 2025 as a result of the increased demand for its antimony products. Due to export restrictions in China since the fall of 2024, Campine and other suppliers benefit from a considerable surge in demand. 'In the last months we booked orders from new customers around the globe' CEO De Vos explains. 'Our global sales volumes of antimony trioxide have increased on average with 35% and given the lowered demand in Europe the overseas sales have in fact more than doubled'. Antimony metal prices have now reached a record level of 60.000 USD/ton. 'At this price level we also expect much higher sales revenue and profits'. Campine is forecasting a sales revenue of about 380 M€ and an EBITDA of at least 50 M€ only for the first semester of 2025, in comparison with 169 M€ sales and an EBITDA of 19,7 M€ for the first semester of last year 2024. For the full year it is too early to make predictions as markets are extremely volatile at this moment. Demand is also typically lower during the summer months. Moreover, antimony prices have stabilised in recent weeks, so the positive impact of the increased business volumes, prices and value augmentations of Campine's antimony stocks could be reduced or absent in the second year half. For further information you can contact Karin Leysen (tel. no +32 14 60 15 49)(email: Attachment 250528 Campine profits engError in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
