As a slow-moving crest works its way down the Mississippi River this week, flood-weary Iowans living along the water were doing their best to cope with the rising water.

In Davenport on Sunday, River Drive lived up to its name: The street looked like a river, but residents said their sandbagging efforts are working.

James Perez, who was helping a local business owner fill sandbags Thursday night outside Mary’s Bar in downtown Davenport, estimated about 180,000 pounds of sand encircled the business they were trying to protect.

About a block away, the barrier outside the bar kept water from entering the business, which remained open Sunday evening.

Perez recalled the 2019 flood, when the Mississippi River broke through a temporary barrier, covering streets and surrounding homes and businesses.

“This time around, we knew ahead of time what to do so I kind of took charge,” Perez said. “I took all the volunteers who were not sure what to do and organized them into a team.”

Some are making the best of a bad situation. With music playing on a portable speaker, Joseph Anderson and Jimi Williams spent a recent afternoon in their kayaks floating down River Drive.

Anderson, a longtime resident of Davenport, said people who call the place home know what to expect.

“Checking out the view and enjoying life. Watching it under water and getting a different perspective of the same thing,” Anderson told . “It’s a beautiful day. We get to see the city. Not everyone gets this view. This is a locals-only tour.”

The flooding caused by snow melt this year does not compare to the 2019 flood, Anderson said.

“You start to get used to it. This one isn’t as bad. Last time we had some levies break and there was a little more damage. It’s not too bad,” Anderson told CNN. “Everyone was prepared. They’ve been through this before, and if you are local you know what to expect.”

Claudia Anderson, the manager of The Phoenix, a large downtown Davenport restaurant, said Monday the barriers seemed to be holding water out of the business, and sump pumps are taking out the little water that does get it.

But the restaurant cannot open, and it’s losing tens of thousands of dollars in revenue, she said. She has had to temporarily lay off about two dozen employees, including some who have no other income.

“It is what it is, we’ve gone through this, I can’t tell you how many times we’ve gone through the flood,” Anderson said.

The crest in the Quad Cities area in Iowa ranked in the top 10 historic crests Monday, according to the National Weather Service.

The river gauge at Rock Island, near Davenport, was cresting with water levels fairly steady around 21.4 feet Monday morning, placing it as the eighth-highest recorded at that spot.

Flood warnings continue along a long stretch of the Mississippi River from St Paul, Minnesota, to just north of St Louis, Missouri, as snow melts from a phenomenal winter season.

The recent flooding comes after areas of the Upper Midwest saw extraordinary snowfall this winter. Duluth, Minnesota, broke its highest seasonal snowfall last month, and Minneapolis recorded its third-highest season.

As the snow in the region melts, the swell of water is making its way south.

Upstream from Davenport in Dubuque, Iowa, officials closed all of its floodgates along the river last week, only the third time the gates have been closed since they were installed in 1973. Pumping stations were operating around the clock.

And farther upstream, North Buena Vista area residents were living in flooded homes, CNN affiliate KCRG reported Sunday, taking “canoes back and forth or we wade through the water,” resident Scott Blum told the station.

The Mississippi will continue cresting further south on Tuesday and Wednesday, but major flooding is not forecast for locations farther south.

A levee breach causes more flood damage
Sixty miles north of Davenport, in Green Island, Iowa, a levee breach flooded roughly 4,000 acres of a wildlife refuge and damaged nine properties, according to Jackson County Emergency Management Director Lyn Medinger.

Officials were not yet able to investigate the cause of the breach due to weather, Medinger told CNN Monday, adding authorities will likely reach the area Tuesday morning.

The region has seen powerful winds, making air transport to the area difficult

No injuries were reported and no evacuations have been made, Medinger said.

“The one breach is affecting the low-lying areas in that region,” the director added.

Just a few miles south, in the city of Sabula, the flood wall was eroded by the high winds but officials were able to stabilize the situation with sandbags and avoid flooding, Medinger said.

Here is a curated list of panels on topics such as Ukrainian media, membership and funding models, solutions journalism and more.

April journalists from all over the world will be gathering for the International Journalism Festival in Perugia once again. Many voices from the Reuters Institute will speak at the festival. Here’s a selection of some of the highlights this year, which include panels on reader revenue models, the media in Ukraine, press freedom, equity and inclusion in journalism and AI. All the panels will be live-streamed on the festival’s IJF YouTube channel. See you in Perugia or online.

Investigating the crimes of war
Anna Babinets from Slidstvo.Info | Sam Dubberley from HRW | Sarah El Deeb from AP | Anne Koch from GIJN

12.00. Sala delle Colonne, Palazzo Graziani.
How to support the Ukrainian media system in the long run
Joanna Krawczyk from the German Marshall Fund of the United States | Jakub Parusinski from The Fix | David Schraven from CORRECTIV | Penelope Winterhager from the JX Fund | Eugene Zaslavsky from the Media Development Foundation

14.00. Sala della Vaccara, Palazzo dei Priori.

Membership models: all you need to know about running a member-centric newsroom
Leon Fryszer from Krautreporter | Richard Hoechner from Republik | Lea Korsgaard from Zetland | Eduardo Suárez from RISJ

14.00. Sala dei Notari, Palazzo dei Priori.
Gender, leadership and surviving authoritarian regimes and cultures: women leading independent Arab media speak up
Rawan Damen from ARIJ | Fatemah Farag from Welad Elbalad Media | Diana Moukalled from Daraj | Nora Younis from AlManassa News

15.00. Sala della Vaccara, Palazzo dei Priori.
Solutions journalism: a means to achieve equity and inclusion
Dina Aboughazala from Egab | Caleb Okereke from Minority Africa | Dora Santos Silva from Obi.Media | Holly Wise from the Solutions Journalism Network

16.00. Sala Brugnoli, Palazzo Cesaroni.
Two to tango: a closer look at the relationship between independent investigative teams and legacy media
Cecilia Anesi from IRPI | Nikolas Leontopoulos from Reporters United | Geoffrey Livolsi from Disclose | Elisa Simantke from Investigate Europe | Bastian Obermayer

16.00. Auditorium San Francesco al Prato.
How the far right is going global
Luke O’Brien from the Shorenstein Center | Andrea Dip from Agência Pública | Natalia Viana from Agência Pública | Jamil Chade

17.00. Sala dei Notari, Palazzo dei Priori.
Legal threats hampering media freedom
Lina Attalah from Mada Masr | Will Church from TRF | Chile Eboe-Osuji from Toronto Metropolitan University | Jodie Ginsberg from CPJ | Joel Simon from the Journalism Protection Initiative | Antonio Zappulla from TRF

Mediwhale co-founder and CEO Kevin Choi discovered that he had lost vision in nearly half of one of his eyes from glaucoma when he was 24, which is rare in young people.

“I was devastated and could not believe this was happening to me,” Choi told TechCrunch. “There were no [initial] symptoms for me to recognize. If this had been diagnosed and treated early, I could have saved my vision.”

This ordeal motivated Choi to start a company to help people detect health risks early, even before symptoms appear. Following his treatment, Choi and his doctor Tyler Rim, a vitreoretinal surgeon, founded Mediwhale in 2016. The Seoul-headquartered healthcare startup has built an AI-powered non-invasive retina scan to diagnose cardiac and kidney disorders and more diseases through its patients’ retinal photographs.

Mediwhale’s first product is Reti-CVD, an AI-powered retinal diagnostic solution that assesses the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in patients. Choi told TechCrunch that early detection and assessment of CVD risks would let users start statin therapy early for CVD intermediate and high-risk groups. Mediwhale’s tech offers results in under a minute, according to Choi.

Medical professionals typically use computerized cardiac tomography (CT) scans to predict CVD risk. Despite its accuracy, high-dose radiation exposure, a relatively high price and long wait times for final results are the drawbacks of a cardiac CT scan. Mediwhale claims its Reti-CVD precision matched cardiac CT scanning in predicting potential CVD risks, while avoiding radiation exposure entirely, and being accessible in primary care settings rather than in dedicated testing facilities.

The startup’s primary targets are those who currently do not currently have cardiovascular disease but have the potential to develop CVD in the future, like diabetes and metabolic disease patients, Choi said. Mediwhale focuses on South Korea as a testbed before launching its service in the U.S.

Just last week, Mediwhale’s Reti-CVD received a temporary reimbursement code for two years from the Korean national insurance government, Choi told TechCrunch. The latest approval comes roughly eight months after it earned medical device approval in August. In other words, health insurance covers Reti-CVD as doctors in primary care and hospitals officially use it to treat patients in South Korea for the next two years; afterward, Mediwhale must submit additional clinical data to get a permanent code. It expects to sell its product this summer in South Korea.