State and Regional News

The Department of Defense COVID-19 mandate is creating “dilemmas” for the Iowa National Guard, Maj. Gen. Ben Corell told the Legislature on Thursday. “Let me be clear: Federal COVID-19 vaccine mandates will no doubt impact our organization,” Corell, adjutant general, said in his annual Condition of the Guard address. “These mandates have already started to create dilemmas within our ranks, where members must decide either to get vaccinated, or to be forced to leave military service.”...

Parents must be given preference in regaining custody of their children in cases where other people have been caring for the kids through a guardianship, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled Friday. In a decision involving the case of a single mother and her child’s grandparents, the court established that parents have a fundamental right to the care, custody and control of their children. ...

By JARED STRONG Iowa Capital Dispatch Iowa’s two U.S. senators hope to codify a waiver into federal law that would allow gasoline fuels that are 15% ethanol to be sold during the summer. “I hope Congress can act to fix this issue,” U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican, said this week. “It makes no sense for a quirk of environmental regulation to prevent this E15 from being sold during the summer.”...

Emphasizing the importance of personal freedom and responsibility, Gov. Kim Reynolds used her annual Condition of the State address to propose a flat income tax, reduced unemployment benefits, and more transparency and choice for Iowa parents.  “I’m proud to report, for the fourth time, in every corner of Iowa, the condition of our state is strong,” Reynolds said to a House chamber packed with lawmakers, journalists and guests, according to prepared remarks. ...

Iowa is in the middle of its annual bald eagle population survey and although the numbers are still coming in, all indications point to 2022 being a really good year for eagles wintering in Iowa. Bald eagles are migratory, but only travel as far as necessary to find food. Eagles wintering in Iowa likely came from Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, that have large resident populations, and join resident Iowa eagles looking for river sections with open water to dine on fish and waterfowl...

About half of recent coronavirus infections in Iowa — which are spiking and have reached new heights in Johnson County, for example — have been caused by the omicron variant, according to State Hygienic Lab analyses. “The surge of delta and omicron cases are stressing our health care system,” said Sarah Ekstrand, a spokesperson for the Iowa Department of Public Health...

President Joe Biden met virtually with independent farmers and ranchers this week to discuss initiatives to reduce food prices by increasing competition within the meat industry, part of a broader effort to show his administration is trying to combat inflation...

A federal appeals court has ruled that Tyson Foods can’t claim it was operating under the direction of the federal government when it tried to keep its processing plants open as the coronavirus spread rapidly within them during the early days of the pandemic...

As the COVID-19 omicron variant surges across the United States, top federal health officials are looking to add a negative test along with its five-day isolation restrictions for asymptomatic Americans who catch the coronavirus, the White House’s top medical adviser said Sunday...

Authorities say a California man arrested in Iowa had an assault rifle, ammunition and a “hit list” that named President Joe Biden, former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and others. The man was pulled over while driving eastbound on Interstate 80 on Dec. 21, the Des Moines Register reported Thursday. Authorities say in criminal complaint that police stopped the man because he was driving aggressively...

President Joe Biden cannot require teachers in the Head Start early education program to be vaccinated against COVID-19, a Louisiana federal judge ruled Saturday, handing a victory to 24 states that had sued the federal government. U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty wrote that the Biden administration unlawfully bypassed Congress when ordering that workers in Head Start programs be vaccinated by Jan. 31 and that students 2 years or older be masked when indoors or when in close contact outdoors...

A pair of nieces, Diana Koppen of Spencer, and Pam Doocy-Curry, have decided to share their aunt’s memoir detailing her long, storied civil rights journey, interracial marriage challenges and her decision to move to Spencer later in life with husband, David, in a new book, “Breaking Free From Rigid Boxes: From the Outside Looking In; Marion Helland: Nine Decades of Civil Rights Service.”...

Construction has begun on a 16-mile hiking and biking trail connecting the Iowa towns of Sioux City and Le Mars. The Sioux City Journal reports that ground was broken Tuesday on the PlyWood Trail. The PlyWood Trail Foundation has raised more than $4 million from public and private sources, and is seeking state and federal grants...

Iowa anticipates spending $9.2 million to shore up health care staffing at strained hospitals amid the latest COVID-19 surge. The Des Moines Register reports that 100 out-of-state nurses and respiratory therapists began arriving in Iowa earlier this month. They are being placed in 17 facilities in Davenport, Des Moines, Iowa City, Mason City, Cedar Rapids, Dubuque, Waterloo, Council Bluffs, Ames and Sioux City...

Iowa lawmakers have drafted a bill to prohibit employer vaccine mandates, members of the House State Government Committee confirmed Thursday. Rep. Jon Jacobsen, R-Council Bluffs, led a task force of lawmakers who developed the proposal over the last several weeks. Lawmakers on the task force declined to provide a draft of the bill to the Iowa Capital Dispatch, but they said the legislation would prevent businesses from firing individuals who refuse a COVID-19 vaccination...

Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) are calling on Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) to convene a full committee hearing on the rise in violent crime across the country. Their request comes the day after senators were prohibited from participating virtually in a Chicago-based field hearing that focused on crime in Durbin’s hometown...

A company that wants to build a pipeline to carry carbon dioxide from ethanol plants in Iowa and several other states to North Dakota where it would be stored underground is fighting Iowa regulators’ order to reveal the names of business and governments in the path of the $4.5 billion project...

Spencer High School alums Kyle Goeken and Natalie Kroll are part of a new theater project, “The Audience Disturbs Marcel’s Bath Time and He Is Very Upset with You All,” headed to Arts on Grand for a four-show run beginning begins today.. The interactive, meta-theatrical comedy, written by Ryan M. ...

Iowa liquor sales exceeded $400 million for the first time in fiscal year 2021, the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division reported Tuesday. “The outcomes within this year’s annual report reflect good government planning and execution,” ABD Administrator Stephen Larson said in a news release...

Iowa posted more than 800 COVID-19 hospitalizations and 130 more deaths on Wednesday as virus activity remains high throughout the state. Iowa public health officials reported 823 people hospitalized with the virus, including 14 children age 11 or younger. All are unvaccinated. Another five children between age 12 and 17 are hospitalized and all but one are unvaccinated...

Three years after he found himself in an Iowa prison, John C. Barnes III looks back on that arrest as the shock he needed to build a better life – and he’s grateful for help from the IowaWORKS advisor who kept driving him to pursue a real career. Advisor Terry Zmolek “pushed me,” a now-free Barnes said by telephone from Kansas recently. ...

For several years the Cherokee Parks and Recreation Committee has discussed building a skate park in Cherokee. With increased interest from the community recently shown by a petition that has been signed by more than 425 individuals, the Commission would strongly like to implement such a project for local skaters. And there are many of them out there as we are learning...

The U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday that Iowa is “heavily biased” toward institutionalizing people with intellectual disabilities. The findings are the result of a long-running investigation into the state-run Glenwood and Woodward resource centers for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. ...

A northwest Iowa cattle farmer repeatedly allowed manure-laden water to escape from a detention basin near his feedlots this year, which polluted a creek and its tributary and killed about 13,000 small fish. Lou Pick, of rural Remsen, has agreed to pay fines of nearly $9,000 for the most-recent infraction that resulted in the fish kill, according to an Iowa Department of Natural Resources administrative consent order...

Western Iowa Congressman Randy Feenstra, a member of the House Agriculture Committee, the Energy, Climate, and Conservation Task Force, and the House Biofuels Caucus, released a scathing statement after the Environmental Protection Agency announced Renewable Volume Obligations (RVOs) that he said severely undercut the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS)...

A recent job posting that seeks temporary critical care nurses for a major Des Moines hospital offered pay of $100 per hour and a weekly stipend of about $1,200 for three months of work. The demand for so-called “traveling nurses” from other states has risen as longstanding nursing shortages have been exacerbated by a surge of COVID-19 hospitalizations...

Iowa has cleared a backlog of thousands of sexual assault evidence kits, the Attorney General’s Office reported Tuesday, resulting in nearly 300 DNA matches and four criminal cases. The Iowa Sexual Assault Kit Initiative began in 2015 with the goal of testing a backlog of sexual assault evidence kits in the state. ...

Volunteers from Spencer Hy-Noon Kiwanis joined Barbara and Dr. Rick Wilkerson, and members of their family, at Grand Avenue Community Outreach to box up and load donated medical supplies which will be shipped to the medical facility on the Love Takes Root campus. ...

Residents in the area of Pillsbury Point on West Lake Okoboji have filed a court petition against the city of Arnolds Park and the state of Iowa. The group says the city plans to improve a nearby pathway but claims the city has abandoned rights to it. Both the city and the state have filed for the case to be dismissed...

After a few extra months of waiting, Kingsley-Pierson was finally able to reveal their new gymnasium to a crowd of spectators last week as the girls basketball team hosted the first varsity sporting event there. For Superintendent Scott Bailey, it was nice to finally get to showcase the new facility...

Iowa motorists will soon have the option of keeping their driver’s license on their phones. State officials have begun a pilot project to make digital driver’s licenses, or “mobile IDs,” available for download via smartphone apps sometime in 2022, the Cedar Rapids Gazette reported Friday...

The Iowa Supreme Court has ruled that the state is not wrongfully detaining sex offenders by delaying the treatment they must complete to be considered for parole. The opinion issued Tuesday states that the Iowa Department of Corrections has acted reasonably in attempting to address the fact there are too many sex offenders in the system to provide treatment on a timely basis. ...

Iowa’s rape shield law cannot be used to protect a 10-year-old victim from cross-examination about her past relationship with a second abuser, the Iowa Supreme Court has ruled. The court said while Iowa’s rape shield law prevents defense lawyers from questioning rape victims about past sexual experience, a Sioux County case provides an exception to that prohibition because it resulted in the defendant losing his right to confront witnesses against him...

The COVID-19 pandemic sent the U.S. economy into a short but drastic recession, generating a wave of layoffs and business closures. But a new analysis found that the first seven months of the pandemic actually ended with fewer Iowans delinquent on credit card and student loan debts...