Daily Inbox

A woman in North Dakota recently launched a new business that offers workshops for women in car and home repair. The idea for the company, Misfix, was conceived while Amanda McKinnon was at the Women's Startup Weekend in Fargo last April. An entrepreneur with her own marketing company, she was originally there to discuss her work and inspire other women. Little did she know that inspiration would come to her. While discussing how her father had taught her plumbing and other handy repair skills, she realized that not many women had been offered the opportunity to learn these things at a young age. It was then that she decided to create a business to help women become self-sufficient in these male-dominated, but entirely necessary, areas. McKinnon will be offering workshops througho...

Firefighters in several towns across America were kept busy this week as multiple propane tank explosions occurred just hours apart. When emergency teams arrived at the scene of the blaze that took place in Jersey City on March 22, a leaking propane tank ruptured and was propelled several hundred feet into the air and then outwards, where it landed adjacent to the nearby light-rail tracks. Remarkably, nobody was injured, nor did the operators of the light-rail service need to shut down for any period of time. In Fargo on the very same day, things could have gotten much worse. Small propane tanks also unexpectedly burst there, though the presence of a much larger 300-pound tank made the situation all the more daunting for emergency responders. The large tank did not burst, but one ...

In the Austin, Texas suburb of Oak Hill, a low-life thief has taught one Girl's Scout Troop a valuable lesson -- people are horrible. This March, an unknown burglar broke into the local Girl Scout's equipment shed by smashing a padlocked door. Once inside, the thief stole $2,000 worth of camping equipment, the fruits of the girls' cookie selling labors. And because the equipment shed stored equipment for multiple troops, the thief has deprived thousands of southwest Austin girls of their camping equipment, including tents, stoves, coolers, and more. The girls may be able to get their equipment back, but their innocence is gone forever. “The girls really don’t understand why someone would break in and steal all their camping equipment. I think that’s the big question they have. Why...

Hacking into a federal website would typically be grounds for a lengthy prison sentence, but the U.S. government recently announced that it will actually be rewarding anyone who can find a weak spot in its coding. According to Fox News, the Department of Defense is preparing to host the first-ever "Hack the Pentagon" competition. As part of the program, vetted hackers will be allowed and encouraged to attack the government's cybersecurity systems in hopes of finding a flaw that can be improved upon. In a statement announcing the competition, the Department of Defense revealed that a select group of hackers will participate in a "controlled, limited duration program that will allow them to identify vulnerabilities on a predetermined department system." "I am always challengin...

Donald Trump has proven throughout the course of his presidential campaign that he is not opposed to making personal attacks on his fellow candidates. Now, many believe that the real estate mogul has crossed the line by offending those who suffer from a chronic medical condition. According to Stat, Trump has gone out of his way in recent weeks to remark on the "sweaty tendencies" of Republican candidate Marco Rubio. The two traded verbal barbs leading up to Super Tuesday, and Trump is pulling out all the stops to protect his comfortable lead in the polls. While Trump may think he's merely being cheeky, his comments have offended an entire community of people who suffer from a condition called hyperhidrosis, characterized by excessive sweating. The controversial businessman h...

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's exact cause of death will never be known. It might have just been a desire for privacy, but when Scalia's family decided not to have an autopsy done on the controversial political figure, they inherently invited countless questions and conspiracy theories. While it might be more entertaining to talk about the Illuminati-esque hunting group retreat he was a part of at the time of his death, it's probably more reasonable to consider a condition he was known to have had: sleep apnea. According to The Washington Post, when Scalia was found dead in his bed on Feb. 13 in the Texas hunting lodge hotel room, everything was in neat order, as those who knew the Justice would expect. Everything, that is, except for the Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPA...

Although many lawmakers are constantly trying to introduce legislation that will improve their communities and the general well-being of their constituents, the results often vary. One of the biggest changes a few different states across the nation are considering is to the medical malpractice system currently in place. According to the Portland Press Herald, Maine is one of those states. Lawmakers in the Pine Tree State are considering a proposal that would fundamentally change the way in which medical malpractice claims are handled and ultimately adjudicated. The initiative is part of what's currently a six-state effort by the Georgia-based Patients for Fair Compensation organization. The organization is a nonprofit founded by Richard Jackson, CEO of one of the largest healthcare c...

As the public gets fed up with being flooded with paid ads online, having organic content has never been more important for businesses trying to gain exposure. With Google's impending Penguin update around the corner, Search Engine Land reports that Google has also shown that they believe this to be a vital factor in effective search engine marketing. In a recent interview with Stone Temple Consulting, Google’s Gary Illyes discussed how the search engine giant would handle SEO certification. The bottom line: they won't. They will still offer certification for AdWords, display ads, AdSense, Analytics, Google Apps, and a large number of other platforms. The driving force behind Google's decision is that they no longer want to accept money from webmasters in place of organic search resu...

After a long recovery from the financial crisis, it would seem that first time home buyers, who account for about 32% of people looking for a new house, are finally ready to join the real estate market. According to Fox Business, new residential sales increased 10% from November to December of 2015. Existing home sales in January reached their highest annual rates in six months. Data from LendingTree showed that March, April, and May are the most popular months for requesting mortgages, meaning home sales are expected to increase even more in the months to come. The national average for mortgages from last year balanced out to around $220,499. A survey conducted by TD Bank found that nearly 20% of first time buyers would like to purchase during this coming spring. Two-thirds of...

Even though the housing market has seen great improvement since the financial crisis, some new home builders in the U.S. are conflicted after a recent drop in home starts, according to Equipment World. For the second consecutive month, January saw a decrease in home construction rates of about 3.8% to a seasonally adjusted rate of 1.143 million annually. That's only 1.8% above the January rates of 2015 as shown by data from the Commerce Department. Single-family starts fell 3.9% to a rate of 731,000, which was still up 3.5% from the previous year. Apartment starts, on the other hand, were down 3.8% from a year ago, falling 2.5% in January to 354,000. A reliable measure of the trends in the home building industry are building permits, which also fell in January. Permits fell ...