DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Des Moines police have identified the victim of a weekend fatal shooting as a Keokuk man. Police were called Saturday night to an industrial area east of downtown and found a dead man on a road. He was identified Monday as 41-year-old Michael Thurman. On Sunday, police charged 27-year-old Andrew James Hall, of Des Moines, with first-degree murder and first-degree robbery. He was being held in the Polk County Jail.
The Griswold School Board will hold a Special Session 3-p.m. Tuesday, in the Elementary School Library. The meeting is being held to take action on steps necessary to refinance about $1.8-million worth of School Infrastructure Sales, Service and Use Tax Revenue Bonds. That includes:
The Audubon Community School District’s Board of Education will hold a special, electronic session, 7:30-a.m. Tuesday. The meeting takes place in the High School Board room, but there is a limit of 10 participants, with preference toward Board members and others necessary to conducting the meeting. Members of the public wanting to see the meeting, are strongly encourage to attend via Zoom. You may request the link from Superintendent Eric Trager, by e-mailing etrager@audubon.k12.ia.us. The link will be sent out this (Monday) afternoon, to those who request it.
On the agenda for Tuesday morning’s meeting, is approval of the End of Fiscal Year Expenditures, and a copier lease, along with personnel matters. The Board will also receive an update on the district’s facilities project.
The 7:20-a.m. Sportscast with Jim Field.
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Police in Creston report 40-year old Aaron Riepe, of Creston, was taken into custody, Saturday afternoon. Reipe was arrested at his home, on a Union County Warrant for the charge of Violation of Probation and was additionally charged with Possession of a Controlled Substance 3rd or subsequent. He was being held in the Union County Jail while awaiting a bond hearing.
The area’s latest and/or top news stories at 7:05-a.m. From KJAN News Director Ric Hanson.
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(Radio Iowa) — While the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines will not be hosting the state fair this summer, the engine is still running for the big classic car event over the upcoming Fourth of July weekend. Harry Daviess, a spokesman for the Goodguys Rod & Custom Association, says the 29th annual Speedway Motors Heartland Nationals will be held starting Friday, with a multitude of precautions in place due to COVID-19. “We’re asking our participants and our spectator attendees to bring a personalized, alcohol-based sanitizer,” Daviess says. “We will have many hand washing stations throughout the facility to keep everybody safe. You can bring and wear a mask.”
Masks are optional on the 16-hundred acres of outdoor space, but masks are mandatory if you enter any of the buildings. Thousands of shiny vehicles will be lined up for spectators to admire, including hot rods, trick trucks and muscle cars. Part of the allure of attending the show is chatting with the owners about how they restored the vehicles, and he says the pandemic won’t be able to quash those interactions. “Everybody that’s attending the event, they have a personal responsibility and that responsibility is to stay social distanced,” Daviess says. “You can still talk with somebody and have a conversation about their vehicle from six feet away. We’re not asking people to do anything differently from what they’re doing in the community today.”
Attendance over the three-day event has reached 50-thousand in past years, though the number of show cars on display this year may be somewhat reduced.”We’ve had as many as 4,500 to 5,000 cars and yeah, we’re expecting a slight decrease in attendance just because some people aren’t ready to travel yet, they’re not ready to drive their car 1,000 miles from out of state,” Daviess says. “It’s hard to tell until we do the actual event.”
Many of the traditional features are still planned, including the vendor midway, swap meet, model and pedal car displays, and the fireworks show, as well as Autocross racing events. Daviess says online ticket sales are discounted for advance sales. The Heartland Nationals run through Sunday.
(Updated 10-a.m., 6/29) – The Iowa Department of Public Health, today (Monday), reports 298 new cases of COVID-19 since Sunday, for a total of 28,728. Of that total, 7,148 persons have a pre-existing health condition. Officials say 300,427 Iowans have been tested for the virus, with 271,283 coming up with a negative test result. Three Iowans have died from COVID-19, since Sunday, for a total of 707, with 497 of those having had a pre-existing medical condition. The IDPH says 17,711 Iowans have recovered, and a total of 805,086 assessments have been completed. The state has shown an uptick in positive cases at the end of June, while overall positive cases had been flat or downward trending since early May. Testing levels are at all-time highs for Iowa, averaging more than 5,500 test results per day in the last 7 days.
The number of Long-Term Care (LTC) facility outbreaks is down to 24 as of today (Monday). In those care facilities, 723 people have tested positive, 428 have recovered and 364 have died, which is one more death than reported on Sunday. Iowa’s hospitalization rates continue to show a steady decline since an apparent peak in early May. The State’s RMCC database show: 119 people are hospitalized with COVID-19 (1 more than Sunday), 35 are in an ICU (1 less than yesterday), 19 were admitted to a hospital (4 more than Sunday), and 18 are on a ventilator. The numbers for southwest and western Iowa (RMCC Region 4) have remained essentially unchanged since Sunday (6 hospitalized, 2 in an ICU, 1 admitted [1 more than Sunday]and 1 on a ventilator)
The State’s COVID-19 database shows the following numbers for positive cases and recoveries ( ), with any 24-hour changes marked with an *.
The Iowa Department of Public Health reports the latest data on coronavirus in real time on this website.
(Brownfield Ag News) – The 2020 National FFA Convention and Expo will be held virtually. National FFA CEO Mark Poeschl says at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic the organization began working on two parallel paths- what a reduced-sized convention would look like and what a virtual convention would look like. He said it became clear that hosting a virtual convention was the only reasonable option. “By making the decision now it gives us a full four months to plan what we anticipate will be a truly remarkable virtual experience for many more students across the country,” he says. Poeschl says more details on the program and registration will be released August 12.
“We’ve already been working on what a virtual FFA Blue Room would look like, we’re identifying what we could do in terms of an expo experience, we’re evaluating how we could have some sort of concert experience, as well as what I would consider the normal sessions of keynote speakers, retiring address, and award presentations,” he says. He says the National FFA Organization looks forward to returning to Indianapolis with an in-person convention in 2021 as part of its long-term hosting partnership that will now run through 2033.
The event will be hosted by the 2019-2020 National FFA Officer Team. The team will travel to Indianapolis in July to help with planning. The virtual convention will still take place the week of October 28.
(Brownfield Ag News) – A coalition of U.S. Senators is urging the EPA to reject more than 50 so-called “gap-year” RFS waivers recently requested by oil refiners. In a letter, the Senators say the waiver petitions should not even be entertained because they are inconsistent with the 10th Circuit Court decision, Congressional intent, the EPA’s own guidance, and most importantly the interests of farmers and rural communities who rely on the biofuels industry.
Renewable Fuels Association president Geoff Cooper issued a statement applauding the bipartisan group of Senators for exposing the absurdity of the oil industry’s latest ploy to undermine the Renewable Fuel Standard. Growth Energy CEO Emily Skor says the sole purpose of the retroactive exemptions is to circumvent the law at the expense of rural families struggling to get back on their feet. She contends there’s no justification for allowing the petitions to hang over the market, saying it injects uncertainty into America’s agricultural recovery. Kurt Kovarik with the National Biodiesel Board says a new flood of unlawful small refinery exemptions is guaranteed to compound the economic challenges soybean farmers and biodiesel producers are facing.
Among the Senators who signed the letter to EPA were Tammy Duckworth and Richard Durbin of Illinois, Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith from Minnesota, Roy Blunt and Josh Hawley of Missouri, Nebraska’s Deb Fischer and Ben Sasse, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Mike Rounds and John Thune of South Dakota, and Tammy Baldwin from Wisconsin.
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