People Make Business

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) — About 100 people have been ordered to leave their homes as wildfire burns outside Yosemite National Park.

Officials say the residents of the community of Rancheria were told to evacuate Saturday evening.

The blaze, which is burning in a steep and rugged area of thick forests along Highway 140, has also forced the indefinite closure of the roadway.

The highway, one of the main entrances to the park, is shut down for nearly a 15-mile stretch from just east of the town of Mariposa to about two miles outside of the park’s entrance.

Park officials are suggesting tourists traveling to Yosemite take Highway 120 or Highway 41 instead. The Tioga Road is also open for visitors entering the park on Highway 395

With the blaze 35 percent contained Sunday morning, officials say the fire is not expected to be contained until Sept. 9.

A depressed housing market, tighter credit conditions and rising costs of key construction commodities are causing local business and community leaders to think twice before giving designers and developers the green light to build.

Alan Lamson, a principal architect and planning director in East Hartford, is concerned the government’s efforts to balance the national budget could be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back.

While his firm, FLB Architecture & Planning Inc., is busy these days doing more zoning and permit work for clients, Lamson says his backlog has already started to shrink.

“We used to have projects in the pipeline that went out as far as a year,” Lamson said. “Those days are gone. Now it’s about four or five months at most.”

At URS Corp. in Rocky Hill, the backlog is even shorter.

“It’s stable but slow right now,” said Paul Schmidt, vice president of URS Corp. “We’re burning thro

Read more…

NASHVILLE – The state Department of Labor and Workforce Development has set up a special career center in Union City and is meeting with former employees of the Goodyear Tire & Rubber plant that ceased production at its plant there earlier this month.

The agency’s “Rapid Response” team started orientation and workshop sessions Wednesday that will continue daily, except Sunday, through Aug. 4. The meetings cover benefits and eligibility for services. The office is at 204 South 2nd Street in Union City.

Those meetings are scheduled on weekdays from 7 to 10 a.m., 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., and 4 to 7 p.m. Sessions this Saturday are scheduled 9 a.m. to noon.

In addition to those ongoing sessions, state Labormissioner Karla Davis and state Sen. Roy Herron will hold a public meeting at 4 p.m. today at the Obion County Courthouse. They wi

Read more…

Professional networking site LinkedIn announced a new plugin on Monday called “Apply with LinkedIn” that enables job seekers to apply for positions on an employer’s website by submitting their LinkedIn profile as a resume. The company said its latest professional plugin is designed to make the job application process as easy as possible, enabling applicants to apply for jobs with “one simple click.” LinkedIn simplified things for employers as well, and all it takes for companies to include the new button on their websites is a small snippet of code.

“In this challenging jobs environment, LinkedIn’s ability to connect talent with opportunity at massive scale is more essential than ever. Apply with LinkedIn is the next phase of our open platform effort and we hope an important catalyst in creating economic opportunity for our members,” Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn said in a statement.

Job applicants will have the opportunity to edit their LinkedIn profile before submitting, or choose to go directly to “Submit Application” button, which instantly sends their LinkedIn profile data to the employer. Upon applying, applic

Read more…

Doom, meet gloom: The nations health care tab is on track to hit $4.6 trillion in 2020, accounting for about $1 of every $5 in the economy, government number crunchers estimate in a report out today. How much does that work out to per person? Including government and private money, health care spending in 2020 will average $13,710 for every man, woman, and child, says Medicares Office of the Actuary. By comparison, 2011 health care spending is projected to top $2.7 trillion, or about $8,650 per capita, roughly $1 of $6 in the economy.

The analysis found that President Obamas health care overhaul would only be a modest contributor to growing costs—the average yearly growth in health care spending between 2010 and 2020 will only be 0.1 percentage point higher than without his overhaul—even though an additional 30 million people who would be otherwise uninsured stand to gain coverage. The

Read more…

Brenda Scisson is set to become executive director of the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute Foundation Fund, overseeing all fundraising activities for the institute.

Scisson begins work at the fund on Aug. 22.

Scisson has 37 years of experience as a public relations and marketing professional. She was most recently worked 9 years at Stone Ward, a Little Rock advertising, marketing and public relations firm, first as director of public relations and later as public relations counselor.

She is also a War Memorial Stadium commissioner and worked on the stadium’s $16 million renovation.

Before working at Stone Ward, Scisson spent about three years as senior vice president and director of marketing and public relations at Metropolitan National Bank of Little Rock.

From 1977-1999, she was at Cranford Johnson Robinson Woods, another Little Rock advertising agency.

Read more…