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Associated Press
29-04-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
A DECADE OF IMPACT: TACO BELL FOUNDATION'S LIVE MÁS SCHOLARSHIP CELEBRATES 10 YEARS BY AWARDING $14 MILLION TO FANS AND TEAM MEMBERS
The Live Más Scholarship continues to champion the next generation with record-breaking financial support for passion-driven students. IRVINE, Calif., April 29, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The Taco Bell Foundation's Live Más Scholarship program is celebrating its 10th anniversary with its largest scholarship distribution yet: $14 million awarded to passionate young people across the country. Of that total, a record-breaking $4.5 million is going directly to Taco Bell Team Members—underscoring the Taco Bell Foundation's commitment to the people who bring the brand to life every day. Scholarship award amounts range from $5,000 to $25,000 per recipient, with the possibility to renew up to four times. 'What's inspired me most at the Taco Bell Foundation is the incredible ambition of our scholars, especially our Team Member recipients,' said Lisa Lane Cardin, Executive Director of the Taco Bell Foundation. 'They are true go-getters—thriving at work, pushing themselves in school, and still finding time to chase their passions with unmatched drive and heart. All of our scholars truly know what it means to Live Más.' BIG NUMBERS. BIGGER DREAMS. To date, the Taco Bell Foundation has awarded more than $64 million in Live Más Scholarships to over 3,000 recipients, including more than 1,000 Taco Bell Team Members, with many recipients having received renewals. Thanks to fan-powered donations through the Round Up program at checkout, the impact keeps growing. Just 44 cents—the average donation—goes a long way: scholarships for Taco Bell fans are funded entirely through Round Up, while Team Member scholarships are made possible by contributions from Taco Bell Corp. and Taco Bell franchisees. The scholarship has come far since its first year: annual funding has increased from $1 million to $14 million; applications have soared from 6,000 to over 15,000 submissions this application period, and the number of Team Member applications has increased by nearly 450%. The inaugural class included 270 scholarships, a sharp contrast to the 1,000 scholarships this year. 'The scholarship wasn't just a one-time opportunity—it became a part of my life's mission, a constant reminder that I'm part of something bigger than myself,' said Ricarda Urso, a member of the inaugural Live Más Scholarship class. 'The Foundation's impact doesn't stop with the scholarship—it's a lasting movement, one that motivates me to keep pushing forward and to pay it forward in whatever way I can.' A DECADE OF IMPACT, A FUTURE FULL OF PROMISE In this application cycle, passions spanned every field, from food science and business to emergency medicine and engineering. Check out how two inspiring 2025 Live Más Scholars are making an impact: THE LIVE MÁS SCHOLARSHIP DIFFERENCE From surprise celebrations at Taco Bell restaurants to a Sacramento Kings game and even Davante Adams' football camp, the Taco Bell Foundation has made this scholarship season unforgettable. For the first time, it hosted a reveal inside the iconic Taco Bell Test Kitchen, bringing passion for food and innovation to life in a whole new way. Four students passionate about food innovation and culinary arts arrived ready to take on a menu development challenge. What they didn't expect was the unforgettable twist that came after the competition—a surprise scholarship celebration right inside the Test Kitchen. Taco Bell Chief Marketing Officer Taylor Montgomery and Global Chief Food Innovation Officer Liz Matthews were in on the surprise, making the moment even more memorable. The Live Más Scholarship isn't based on GPAs or test scores—it's built around passion. Designed for creative thinkers, cultural rebels and bold dreamers, the program invites applicants to share their story through a two-minute video, spotlighting how they plan to make an impact. In return, if selected, they join a supportive, purpose-driven community and gain access to mentorship, career workshops, internships, and networking opportunities, making the scholarship more than just financial support, but a launchpad for what's next. About Taco Bell Foundation Taco Bell Foundation, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) public charity that helps break down barriers to educate and inspire the next generation of America's young leaders. Since 1992, the Taco Bell Foundation has reached more than 9 million young people across the country and has awarded more than $189 million in grants and scholarships, focused on education and career readiness. This impact is made possible through a range of programs, including Community Grants, which support more than 450 nonprofit organizations nationwide and the passion-based Live Más Scholarship. For more information about the Taco Bell Foundation, visit Delani Myers – Edelman [email protected] Kathryn Kelly – Taco Bell Corp. [email protected] View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Taco Bell Corp.
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Iowa House not moving forward with bill shielding pesticide companies from health-related lawsuits
DES MOINES, Iowa — For two years in a row, what protesters coined the 'Cancer Gag Act' will not make it through the Iowa House. The Iowa Senate advanced the bill just a week ago with a slim margin: 26 voting for it and 21 against. The bill states that registered pesticide companies with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, that have had labeling approved by the EPA shall be sufficient to satisfy requirements for a warning regarding health or safety. It also states that the bill shall not be interpreted to prohibit a cause of action, which is grounds for a lawsuit. The Speaker of the Iowa House told members of the media that it will not be moving forward with the bill at this time. 'I think at this point in time, there's not support within the caucus for that bill,' said Speaker Pat Grassley (R), District 57 from New Hartford. 'And I think the caucus just in a position where they're not sure that they can support it at this point in time.' The Iowa Senate President was disappointed once again that the Republican House caucus did not move the bill through committee level to make it funnel-proof. Wild Lights at Blank Park Zoo returns this weekend 'I suppose the House can be entitled to their wrong opinion. I believe wholeheartedly that the bill we passed doesn't prevent anybody from seeking justice if they're damaged by a company. But I also believe that to have a proper system of justice, we have to make sure that individuals or companies can't be sued for following the law.' Cancer rates have shot up in the state over recent years and many Iowans have taken action against companies like Bayer, who produces RoundUp, which is why some protested at the statehouse just this week for the bill not to advance through the second funnel. Bayer has disputed the claims of RoundUp causing cancer, while paying out billions of dollars to settle previous lawsuits. Democratic leadership in both chambers are glad that the bill seems to be dead again this year. 'I think it would be a really positive thing for Iowans if the pesticide bill does not move forward,' said Senate Minority Leader Janice Weiner (D), District 45 from Iowa City. 'It was, from our read of it on the Senate side, it's really an immunity bill. And once you give one set of companies immunity, others are going to be lining up for it.' 'I think it's pretty telling that even Republicans in the House, that giving immunity to pesticide companies in a state that has skyrocketing cancer rates is not a good idea. And I'm thrilled to see that, hopefully, we won't be debating that this year,' said House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst (D), District 32 from Windsor Heights. While the bill did not meet the second funnel week deadline, there are still ways for bill to be brought back up later in session. Iowa News: Iowa House not moving forward with bill shielding pesticide companies from health-related lawsuits Tulips begin to bloom in Pella Iowa AG warns your genetic data could be at risk Fan-favorite donut vendor won't return to Iowa State Fair in 2025 WHO 13 Farm Report: Thursday, April 3 Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
27-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Pesticide immunity bill advances from Iowa Senate
An Iowa bill pertaining to pesticide lawsuits would help the makers of RoundUp and other pesticides. (Photo by Cami Koons/Iowa Capital Dispatch) Iowa senators narrowly passed a bill Wednesday that would protect pesticide companies from 'failure to warn' lawsuits. Similar bills have been introduced across the country, after failing in Iowa, Missouri and Idaho last year. Legislators in Georgia advanced their version of the bill, but it has not yet been signed into law by its governor. Senate File 394 would rule that pesticide labels issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 'shall be sufficient' in satisfying any requirement to warn users of the product's health and safety. The bill passed the Senate 26-21. Sen. Mike Bousselot, the bill's floor manager, said despite the arguments against the legislation, 'it's a simple bill.' 'It says that if you sell your glyphosate or your product and you follow federal law to the T, you can't be sued for having done the wrong thing in labeling your product,' Bousselot said of the bill. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX The bill does not name the popular household and commercial pesticide RoundUp and its ingredient glyphosate, but debate on the bill centered on the pesticide's manufacturer, Bayer, and the numerous lawsuits that claim the product gave plaintiffs cancer. Bousselot said the bill does not give blanket immunity, because plaintiffs can still sue under other claims, like negligence, fraud and breach of warranty. The Republican from Ankeny also introduced an amendment that said the bill would not 'prohibit a cause of action based on any other provision or doctrine of state law.' Sen. Matt Blake, D-Johnston, said even with the amendment, which passed, the bill is 'an immunity bill' for pesticide companies. Blake said product liability law comprises three main theories of law, all of which would 'fail' in Iowa under the bill. 'Failure to warn is the root of a product's liability claim,' Blake said. 'If the state deems a warning label to be … sufficient, it kills the root cause.' Sen. Adrian Dickey, R-Packwood, said the bill is about 'sue happy lawyers' and reiterated a point he made in a committee hearing on the bill that the abundance of warning labels in the country have 'diluted' their cautioning. EPA will not allow Bayer to put a cancer warning on its label to simply 'cover their backside' if it is counter to the science submitted to agency, Dickey explained. 'Today's bill is not preventing anyone from suing a company if they feel the product causes cancer,' Dickey said. 'It's simply common sense legislation that states that you cannot sue a company for having a label on a product when the federal government doesn't allow the label to be on the product.' Sen. Janice Weiner, D-Iowa City, noted evidence uncovered during RoundUp litigation, known as the Monsanto Papers, that show the company ghostwrote independent studies to support the safety of the pesticide. 'If they did everything right, why are there reams of discovery emails showing that they lied?' Weiner said. Weiner noted a recently settled case against Bayer in Georgia that sided with plaintiffs. She said the same case would not be allowed in Iowa under the bill. 'A vote for this bill is a statement to Iowans that a plaintiff in Georgia will be made whole financially … but in Iowa, in Iowa, the farmer with cancer gets nothing,' Weiner said. In February, more than 100 Iowans gathered in the State Capitol rotunda to hold a vigil for loved ones who were lost to cancer and to protest the bill they deemed the 'cancer gag act.' Bousselot said the 'dirty little secret' is that his opponents don't want the bill to pass because it would require lawyers to prove that a pesticide chemical is carcinogenic. 'It can't be proven (that) glyphosate causes cancer,' Bousselot said. 'What is the justice in suing someone for mislabeling a product, if the label that you want would have broken federal law in the first place?' Daniel Hinkle, senior counsel for policy and state affairs at American Association for Justice, said the bill would defer to the EPA label on a product's safety, but he said if the label changes in the future, the user would only be protected by what the label said at the time they used the product. Hinkle explained with an example of a farmer using a different chemical, paraquat, which research has shown may be linked to Parkinson's Disease. EPA 'has not found a clear link' between the two, which is reflected in the product's label, similarly to that of glyphosate which the EPA holds is not linked to cancer. 'From this, even if the EPA came out in 2026 and says, 'You know what, paraquat causes Parkinson's disease, and we think it should be on the label,' … the farmer who is exposed under the old label, would have no ability to hold the company accountable,' Hinkle said. Legislators in Oklahoma proposed an amendment to their pesticide bill that would remove a company's immunity from failure to warn claims in the state if the EPA canceled the registration of the pesticide based on new findings. Proponents of the Iowa bill argue that without its protections, Bayer will stop manufacturing and distributing glyphosate, which according to Modern Ag Alliance, would double or triple farmers' input costs across the country. Modern Ag Alliance is a group of agricultural stakeholders, including Bayer and several Iowa commodity groups, that has lobbied in favor of the bills and sponsored advertisements in farming communities across the country with slogans like 'control weeds, not farming.' Weiner brought up the advertisements and said despite the rhetoric, glyphosate 'isn't going anywhere.' Jess Christiansen, the head of crop science and sustainability communications at Bayer, said the company set aside $16 billion for RoundUp litigation and already, the company has spent more than $10 billion of that. 'The reality is that it doesn't matter if you're a big multinational company, like a Bayer Crop Science, or a mid size or a startup company — the math is the math,' Christiansen said. 'You can only endure so much loss before you have to make a tough decision … we can't continue to go down the path we're going.' Bayer maintains that its products do not cause cancer and that it complied with all of the requirements from EPA for the labeling of their products. 'We're very much in favor of being a regulated industry,' Christiansen said. 'It's in the best interest of the public for that to happen –- then let's uphold that, so that's really what the (bill) language is about.' Opponents of the bill, including several senators who spoke on the bill, allege Bayer and other pesticide companies have worked to cover up key information showing researchers are aware of the link to cancer. Central to the argument is a 2015 finding from International Research Agency for Research on Cancer, or IARC, that classified glyphosate as 'probably carcinogenic to humans.' Proponents of the bill discredit the IARC study, noting the large number of substances the body considers carcinogenic, and point to other bodies of research, including those evaluated by EPA and other countries that corroborate the safety of glyphosate. Opponents say IRAC evaluated a greater body of work. Research published in 2019 about the divergence of the two decisions showed IARC evaluated more than twice as many studies in its decision, and more that were peer-reviewed. Sen. Molly Donahue, D-Cedar Rapids, noted recent research showing Iowa has some of the highest rates of new cancer in the country, and said the bill would 'protect the corporate profits at the expense of public health.' 'I'm here to tell you right now that giving corporations immunity when their product harms Iowans, is like handing a wolf the keys to the hen house and hoping for the best,' Donahue said. A bill that advanced in the Iowa Senate last year had a provision limiting the bill's protections to Chinese-owned companies, which targeted paraquat's manufacturer, Syngenta which is owned by ChemChina. SF 394 does not mention Chinese-owned companies. The bill was immediately messaged to the House. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
04-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mirabito launches ‘Round Up' program to benefit Southern Tier Food Bank
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. (WIVT/WBGH) – Shoppers at local Mirabito Convenience Stores can help feed the less fortunate this month. The gas station chain has launched a Round Up program to benefit the Food Bank of the Southern Tier throughout March. Customers at stores within the Food Bank's 6-county region will be asked to round up their in-store purchases with the money going to help feed the hungry. The Food Bank's Corporate Partnerships Manager Maddy McClenahan says the small individual donations can add up to thousands of dollars. 'Just being here this morning, I got to interact with a bunch of them and got to speak on the impact their donation has. It really is true that the smallest amount truly does make a significant difference,' McClenahan said. This Round Up campaign is one of several Mirabito schedules throughout the year at its 109 stores, each one benefiting a different regional charity. Marketing Director Marissa Sweeney says the company steps in at the end with a contribution of its own. 'At the end of this campaign, Mirabito Convenience Stores rounds up that round up as well, really making that significant impact. So, really it's a partnership between Mirabito Convenience Stores and our community partners. We're not just relying on our community members to round up their purchases, we're doing our part to round up as well,' Sweeney said. Mirabito is also contributing to the Food bank of Central New York and the Regional Food Bank to address hunger in the counties they serve as well. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Bill shielding pesticide companies from some lawsuits advances in Iowa Senate
Iowans protest a Senate bill on Feb. 10, 2024, that would shield pesticide companies from certain lawsuits. (Photo by Cami Koons/Iowa Capital Dispatch) A bill that would shield pesticide companies from label-related lawsuits, provided the company adhered to federal label regulations, advanced from the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Senate Study Bill 1051 passed 11-7, with opposing senators arguing the bill protects companies rather than Iowans. Sen. Mike Bousselot, who chaired the bill's subcommittee, said the bill was a 'common sense' piece of legislation. 'It is the simple premise that someone should not be allowed to sue someone else … for failing any duty to warn, when that manufacturer followed every federal rule and regulation required to warn,' Bousselot said. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Similar legislation has cropped up in states across the country, and is pushed by the Modern Ag Alliance, a grouping of agriculture groups and Bayer, a biotech company and manufacturer of the common pesticide, RoundUp. Bayer has spent more $10 billion on lawsuits, across the county, with plaintiffs claiming the product failed to warn them that the chemical glyphosate was a carcinogen. Bayer and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates pesticides, hold that glyphosate is not cancer causing. Sen. Tony Bisignano, D-Des Moines, who also opposed the bill in subcommittee, painted a hypothetical where he used a pesticide according to the label and 20 years later, developed cancer. 'What you just said, did it say that I can sue?' Bisignano asked Bousselot. 'If a pesticide causes you injury, you can still sue,' Bousselot said. The senators disagreed, with Bisignano holding he would only be able to sue if there was negligence or a product defect. 'This just cuts off at the pass Iowans' opportunity to seek the same redress everyone else in the country has,' Bisignano said. Sen. Herman Quirmbach, D-Ames, also spoke in opposition to the bill and said in order for this bill to make sense, lawmakers need to trust the government's labeling standards, pesticide companies must be thorough in their scientific research on a product and submit all of their findings to EPA. 'So if you don't trust the government or you don't trust the chemical companies, or as a lot of people don't trust either, then labels can be wrong,' Quirmbach said. 'If somebody is injured because they believe the label and the label is wrong, they should still have the right to sue.' Sen. Adrian Dickey, R-Fairfield, said Quirmbach and Bisignano's argument was a 'redirect' to 'fire up people' on something that 'doesn't have anything to do with this bill.' 'It's not about whether this causes cancer or not, it's about whether a person can sue a company for not having a label on the product that the EPA says they cannot put on the product,' Dickey said. Dickey said companies try manage risk as much as possible to prevent lawsuits, and noted the simple warning on a coffee cup that the beverage is hot. But, EPA will not allow Bayer to put a cancer warning on their label since the agency's research holds the product is not cancer causing. 'This is a very narrow bill that applies only to the common sense principle that says, if you do the right thing, you shouldn't be sued for having done the wrong thing,' Bousselot said. The bill advances to the Senate floor. Sens. Bisignano, Quirmbach, Mark Lofgren, Janet Petersen, Jeff Taylor, Cherielynn Westrich and Janice Weiner voted no. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
