LAS VEGAS (AP) — A U.S. casino company with 29 properties in 10 states is laying off thousands of employees, citing a slow restart to business following closures due to the coronavirus pandemic. Las Vegas-based Boyd Gaming Corp. said in a statement Monday that an unspecified number of furloughed employees will not return to work. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported 2,500 company workers in Nevada could be affected.

The publicly traded company had about 10,000 employees in Nevada and another 14,300 nationally, according to its last annual report. It also has properties in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

(DES MOINES, Iowa A-P) – Iowa Auditor Rob Sand says the Test Iowa program brought to the state under a $28 million no-bid contract by Gov. Kim Reynolds on recommendation from actor Ashton Kutcher is violating state law in the way it handles test results data. Sand says Test Iowa results first go to two Utah companies contracted to provide testing then to the state’s chief information officer and then to the Iowa Department of Public Health. Sand says this indirect route violates a law requiring laboratories to immediately report infectious diseases to the public health department. Pubic health spokeswoman Amy McCoy says the reporting process follows Iowa law.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska health statistics show more than 400 people have been diagnosed with coronavirus so far this week. The state’s online virus tracker shows 174 cases were reported Sunday and another 227 cases were reported on Monday, bringing the state total to nearly 20,400. Of the total, 16,025 have recovered from the virus. The total number of deaths attributed to COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, had reached 288 by the end of Monday. State officials say 41% of Nebraska’s hospital beds, 45% of the intensive care beds and 80% of the ventilators in the state remained available Tuesday.

GRINNELL, Iowa (AP) — Grinnell College has selected an internal candidate as the school’s newest president. The private liberal arts college in east-central Iowa announced in a news release Tuesday that Anne Harris has been named the school’s 14th president. Harris has been vice president for academic affairs and dean of the college since 2019. Before her move to Grinnell, she spent nearly 20 years at DePauw University in Indiana, where she served as a faculty member and later vice president for academic affairs.

Harris was unanimously selected by the Grinnell Colldge Board of Trustees. She has been serving as acting president since July 1, after former longtime president Raynard Kington left to become head of school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa – The U-S Attorney’s Office reports a Shelby County man was sentenced last week in Council Bluffs District Court, to six and a-half years (78 months) in prison, for Distributing Methamphetamine.  43-year old Ryan Nicholas Schwery is also required to six years of supervised release following his prison sentence, which was the result of an investigation by the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office and Iowa Division of Narcotics Enforcement. The investigation was focused on the distribution of methamphetamine in Harlan.

The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, using a confidential source, made three separate purchases of methamphetamine from Schwery before serving a search warrant on his living quarters at the Harlan Inn and Suites. During the search, officers located approximately 144 grams of pure methamphetamine, along with drug distribution paraphernalia, and over $1,000 in cash from the sale of methamphetamine. On February 21, 2020, Schwery entered a guilty plea to Possession of Methamphetamine with Intent to Distribute.

The matter was investigated by the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office and the Iowa Division of Narcotics Enforcement. The case was prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office for
the Southern District of Iowa.