Renovation work on Nash County jail remains on schedule

Experts say the U.S. Supreme Court’s June ruling overturning Roe v. Wade appears to be sending more teens to their doctors in search of birth control, including long-acting reversible forms like intrauterine devices and implants. Waits for appointments are growing in some areas, Planned Parenthood is getting a flood of questions and doctors report demand even among teens who aren’t sexually active. Some patients are especially fearful because some of the new abortion laws don’t include exceptions for sexual assault. Dr. Peggy Stager said dedicated spots for insertion of the Nexplanon implant are consistently filled at her Ohio practice and requests for contraceptive refills have increased 30% to 40% since the Court's June ruling.

A renewable energy facility in Oregon that combines solar power, wind power and massive batteries to store the energy generated there has officially opened as the first utility-scale plant of its kind in North America. Clean energy experts say the project, which can power 100,000 homes, addresses some key challenges facing the industry as the U.S. transitions away from fossil fuels. Interest in on-site battery storage to even out production from solar or wind generation has soared, but the combination of wind, solar and storage batteries at one location promises to make the Wheatridge Renewable Energy Facility particularly efficient.

Shares of Biogen and other drugmakers researching Alzheimer’s disease have soared after Japan’s Eisai Co. said its potential treatment appeared to slow the fatal disease in a late-stage study. Eisai announced results late Tuesday from a global study of nearly 1,800 people with early-stage Alzheimer’s. The drugmaker said early results showed that its treatment, lecanemab, reduced patient clinical decline by 27% when compared to a placebo or fake drug after 18 months of the infused treatment. Patients were monitored using a scale that measures how they do in areas like memory, judgement, problem solving and personal care.

Hurricane Ian has made landfall in southwest Florida as one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the U.S.. It swamped city streets with water and smashed trees along the coast while moving at a crawl that threatened catastrophic flooding across a wide area. Barely an hour after the massive storm trudged ashore Wednesday, a coastal sheriff’s office reported that it was already getting a significant number of calls from people trapped in homes. The hurricane’s center struck near Cayo Costa, a protected barrier island just west of heavily populated Fort Myers.