Six minutes of news from around the nation.

New surveillance video is prompting fresh leads in the search for Nancy Guthrie, alongside new disclosures tied to the Epstein files. Elsewhere, recalled manufacturing jobs, rising college costs, worker protections, infrastructure needs, farm innovation and cultural preservation are also in focus.

TRANSCRIPT

The Public News Service Daily Newscast Wednesday, February 11th, 2026.

I'm Farah Siddiqui.

The FBI is releasing new surveillance video in the search for Nancy Guthrie, showing a masked armed person at her door the night she vanished.

The footage has triggered new tips as her family says they believe she's still alive.

Meanwhile, Representative Ro Khanna has publicly named six individuals previously redacted in Justice Department files related to Jeffrey Epstein.

245 John Deere workers have been recalled in Iowa after mass layoffs.

They'll be back on the job this month and next.

Mark Moran has the story.

Prompted by weaker demand, a lagging agricultural economy, and Trump administration tariffs on equipment, John Deere laid off workers across the Midwest last fall, including in Iowa.

Charlie Wischman, president of the Iowa AFL, says going back to work is a win for the workers, but also for the communities where they live.

When our communities here that are anchored by companies like John Deere, when those jobs, when those layoffs are announced, it doesn't just throw the family, it throws an entire town into confusion and chaos and worry.

And beyond the workplace, rising costs are also hitting students.

A growing number of college students struggle to pay for digital textbooks and required online course materials.

75 percent of some 4,000 students surveyed nationwide, including those on at least a dozen campuses in Massachusetts, say they've had to purchase access codes to complete homework or quizzes or pay for online content that their instructors intended to be free.

Leanne Cole with the advocacy organization MassPERG Students says the added costs are disrupting lives.

Students described working extra hours, skipping meals, and delaying bill payments in order to afford textbooks and access code.

She says the online materials are often purchased, but only available to students for the given semester.

Democrats have introduced a bill to study the financial impacts of e-textbooks in Massachusetts and potential reforms.

I'm Catherine Carley.

Meanwhile, in California, lawmakers are looking at protections for workers in a fast-growing industry.

California lawmakers are considering a bill introduced Tuesday to regulate the temporary staffing industry to protect workers and weed out bad actors.

The Staffing Agency Fair Employment Act, or SAFE Act, would require mandatory registration and proof of workers' compensation insurance and financial capacity.

Dave Kuiman, president and CEO of Arena Staffing in Ontario, says the authorities have prosecuted a slew of shady operations in recent years.

People are in jail for withholding payroll taxes.

They're not paying workers' compensation.

It just makes it extremely hard for the companies that are legitimate and doing things right to compete on a price level when people are not following the rules.

California temporary staffing agencies generate more than $41 billion a year and employ more workers than in any other state.

This is public news service.

The ag industry is fitting farmers with a host of tech gadgets to make their operations more efficient.

But with environmental pressures mounting, one South Dakota farmer points to a new report calling for faster adoption of climate smart tools.

Environmental Defense Fund says analyzed nearly 400 companies and innovations in the climate smart agriculture market.

Examples include remote sensing like the use of drones to monitor the health of crops.

Rodney Cook farms near Garriston and his machinery has automatic shutoffs to keep inputs in check.

He says he's always learning.

Just because you know we've done things the way we've done them doesn't mean that they're always necessarily the right or the best way.

Cook says upfront costs are not easy to balance for a farmer dipping their toes in these waters.

The EDF report cites similar barriers for widespread adoption of agricultural innovations.

The author stressed the need to protect and expand access to public-private partnerships, competitive grants, and demonstration projects so that farms of all sizes can try out these tools with confidence.

I'm Mike Moen.

The United States needs cement, but it faces some hurdles to producing more of it domestically.

North Carolina and other states would benefit from increasing the country's cement manufacturing.

As the U.S. seeks to bolster infrastructure and construction, cement production has actually declined, falling by four percent in 2024.

Meanwhile, twenty two percent of the cement used in the country was imported.

Patrick Cleary is with Amrise, the country's largest cement producer.

He says North Carolina's growth puts it in a good position to benefit from domestic cement production.

We have increased year over year and continue to increase our production capacity to take advantage of what we believe is a great market in North Carolina where we see tremendous opportunity for growth around the advanced manufacturing of biotech fields as well.

The Build America, Buy America Act was included in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, establishing a preference for American-made materials in infrastructure projects.

I'm Eric Tegethoff reporting.

A dual-language program in the Winnebago Reservation in Nebraska is working to preserve the disappearing Ho-Chunk Indigenous language.

It is disappearing on the reservation and across the Midwest.

The Winnebago Public Schools Dual Language Immersion Program seeks to keep the Ho-Chunk language alive by teaching elementary school kids about its importance, but not just by teaching them words.

Elementary school teacher Michelle LaMere says classrooms are returning to the way Indigenous kids used to learn.

It was all relationship-based.

They were all raised and taught by family members so that their teachers were people that cared for them, that respected them, that loved them.

And so we wanted to recreate that as much as possible.

There are currently fewer than a dozen speakers left in the state.

There are just over 6,000 members of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska.

This is Farah Siddiqui for Public News Service, member and listener supported.

Find our trust indicators at publicnewsservice.org.