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Iowa early News Headlines: Thursday, Aug. 6, 2020

News

August 6th, 2020 by Ric Hanson

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press at 3:35 a.m. CDT

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds has signed an executive order granting convicted felons the right to vote, ending Iowa’s place as the only remaining state to broadly deny voting rights to felons. The Republican governor signed the order Wednesday after promising in June that she would take such action. Reynolds says she’ll continue to press the Legislature to pass a constitutional amendment restoring felon voting rights, which couldn’t be reversed by a future governor. She proposed that last year but couldn’t get Republican state senators to support it. The order excludes automatic restoration for more serious crimes, such as murder, requiring those people to seek individual restoration but does not require repayment of victim restitution before they could vote.

UNDATED (AP) — U.S. testing for the coronavirus is dropping even as infections remain high and the death toll rises by more than 1,000 a day. It’s a worrisome trend that officials attribute largely to Americans getting discouraged over having to wait hours to get a test and days or weeks to find out the results. An Associated Press analysis finds that the number of tests per day slid 3.6% over the past two weeks to 750,000, with the count falling in 22 states. That includes places like Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri and Iowa where the percentage of positive tests is high and continuing to climb, an indicator that the virus is still spreading uncontrolled.

FORT DODGE, Iowa (AP) — Iowa state police say a Fort Dodge woman who was reported to be acting erratically while wielding knives has been shot and killed by police. A news release from the Iowa Department of Public Safety says the shooting happened Tuesday night, after Webster County officials received a 911 call about the woman. The department’s Division of Criminal Investigation says deputies from the Webster County Sheriff’s Office and a Fort Dodge police officer responded, and during their interaction, the woman was shot and killed. Officials have not released the woman’s identity. An autopsy will be conducted by the Iowa State Medical Examiner’s Office. The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation has taken over the investigation.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Two doughnut franchise employees have been fired after refusing to serve a Des Moines police officer. Television station KCCI reports that Sgt. Paul Parizek, a spokesman for the Des Moines Police Department, says he was refused service over the weekend at a Dunkin’ doughnut shop. Parizek said when he asked a woman behind the shop’s counter “what’s going on,” she replied that the store would not serve him and that he needed to leave. Corporate Dunkin’ officials sent a statement saying the Des Moines store’s franchise owner fired two employees over the incident and had contacted police to apologize.