General News

Rancho Cucamonga – October 16, 2026 -- Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP) ranked No. 34 on the 2026 Fortune and Great Place To Work Best Workplaces in Health Care list, its fifth consecutive year on the ranking.

Employee survey returns 87% favorable rating at IEHP

The 2026 Great Place To Work survey went to more than 3,800 IEHP team members. In the survey, 87% of respondents said the health plan is a great place to work. IEHP earned Great Place To Work certification in April for the sixth year in a row.

Global – October 16, 2026 -- Collections systems built on batch updates can leave account and contact data stale for nearly 24 hours, according to CGI, which is urging lenders to move to real-time platforms as portfolios grow more complex and delinquencies rise.

Overnight batch cycles refresh collections data only once per day

Many collections operations rely on batch processing because their systems support nothing else. Updates post to accounts and contacts overnight and can require system downtime. A change made just after processing, such as a payment, a new phone number or updated consent, goes unseen until the next cycle.

Stale data means wasted outreach, inconsistent treatment and avoidable compliance exposure, CGI says.

Global – October 16, 2026 -- Tokenized deposits cannot settle between banks on their own, because Bank A's tokenized deposit is not automatically Bank B's money, according to a new analysis of digital money infrastructure. The receiving institution needs settlement before it can safely credit its customer.

Tokenized deposits digitize one bank's ledger but leave interbank settlement unsolved

Tokenized deposits make commercial bank money programmable while preserving the deposit model. Beyond the issuing bank, however, they need a neutral settlement asset. Across banks, that asset is central bank money, which in a tokenized system could mean tokenized reserves or wholesale CBDCs.

The proposed layered model pairs a tokenized deposit for the customer-money leg with central bank money for the settlement leg. Debit, settlement and credit must complete together.

Pittsburgh – October 15, 2026 -- DICK'S (NYSE: DKS) and its Foot Locker unit expect to hire more than 11,000 seasonal teammates for the 2026 holiday season, with about 8,400 positions at DICK'S banners and roughly 2,900 at Foot Locker banners in North America.

DICK'S targets 8,400 seasonal hires across four store banners

The hiring covers DICK'S Sporting Goods, DICK'S House of Sport, Going Going Gone! and Public Lands locations. The retailer will hold its ninth-annual "National Signing Day" on Wednesday, October 21, 2026, where candidates can interview on-site and meet store leadership at participating locations. Hiring will continue until positions are filled.

Chicago – October 15, 2026 -- The American Association of Endodontists (AAE) is one of 24 associations profiled in a new book on how professional bodies guided their members through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Author Joanna M. Pineda documents association response across health care and education

"When It Mattered Most: The Untold Story of How Associations Protected Professions and Saved Industries During the Pandemic" was written by association executive Joanna M. Pineda. It covers organizations in health care, education and other industries. AAE appears in the health care section with a chapter titled "When the Pain Can't Wait."

Pineda wrote the book to document pandemic response that often happened outside public view. Associations had to interpret rapidly changing information, advocate for their professions and supply resources to members when no established playbook existed.

New York – – October 15, 2026 -- Expert Consumers has named Sharps Assure a top choice for veterinary clinics, citing flat-rate mail-back kits, container sizes from 1 quart to 28 gallons, and no required long-term contracts. The review is published on an affiliate site that may earn commissions from sales made through its links.

Flat-rate kits replace recurring pickup fees

Each Sharps Assure kit price covers the container, return packaging, authorized shipping, treatment and final disposal. The review contrasts this with scheduled pickup services, which can charge for visits whether or not a container is full. Clinics order another kit only when they need more capacity, which ties spending to actual waste volume.

The review says this suits independent offices, mobile veterinarians, specialty clinics and shelters with low or changing volumes. It also names newly opened practices that cannot yet predict monthly sharps output.

Albany – October 15, 2026 -- Trenchless drilling can cost more upfront than traditional excavation, but savings often follow from reduced labor, shorter timelines and less restoration work, according to a HelloNation article featuring David Allegretta of JAT Construction in Albany, N.Y.

Open trenches disrupt roads, sidewalks and nearby infrastructure

Traditional excavation relies on open trenches to reach pipes and cables. The article says the method works but can delay active projects and add costs. It remains suitable for simpler jobs or sites with fewer surface constraints, where it can be cost-effective.

Paris – October 15, 2026 -- French bee has won Gold in the Overall International Carrier category of the 2026 Travel Weekly Magellan Awards, while preparing to add two seasonal long-haul routes from Paris-Orly in December 2026.

Magellan Awards rate entries on individual merit, not head-to-head

Travel Weekly has run the Magellan Awards since 2008. They cover design, marketing and service across airlines, airports, hospitality, cruise lines, destinations and travel services. A panel of travel industry professionals selects the winners. Entries are assessed individually rather than against one another, and Gold and Silver honors go to those that meet the award criteria.

Zemourda Aissaoui, Chief Commercial Officer at French bee, said the award reflects the work of the airline's teams and its aim of making international travel more accessible without cutting the quality of the experience.

Dayton – October 15, 2026 -- Organizations that shred confidential records without a certificate of destruction may be unable to prove compliance during audits or investigations, according to Dayton, Ohio, document shredding expert Rhet Crowe in a HelloNation feature.

Certificates give auditors documented proof that shredding met professional standards

Crowe says shredding alone is not enough. The certificate is formal evidence that confidential documents were securely destroyed, which matters most for financial reports, medical files and legal paperwork. Without it, businesses may struggle to meet documentation requirements or defend their practices under scrutiny.

Lebanon – October 15, 2026 -- Medical and physical therapy students at Western University of Health Sciences (WesternU) in Oregon are mentoring rural high schoolers twice a month through the MIKE Program, a workforce-pipeline pilot that began in Sweet Home in 2020.

Sweet Home request in 2018 led to the 2020 rural pilot

MIKE is a non-profit that educates and mentors youth on healthy living and health care careers. It started in the Portland area and now serves urban and rural communities across Oregon and Southwest Washington. Sweet Home asked in 2018 for a peer-to-peer program linking its high school with the medical school. The partnership launched two years later as a pilot for rural communities.

Students from the Heatherington College of Osteopathic Medicine (HCOM) and the College of Health Sciences-Northwest (CHS-Northwest) volunteer as mentors. Physical therapy students have since joined the original medical student cohort.