Here is the video feed for Governor Reynolds’ Friday press briefing. We will have live audio as well on KJAN at approximately 11:00 a.m.
Here is the video feed for Governor Reynolds’ Friday press briefing. We will have live audio as well on KJAN at approximately 11:00 a.m.
The Northwest Missouri State Bearcats men’s basketball team was poised to make a run at back-to-back National Championships before the NCAA Division II Tournament was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic. Atlantic alum Ryan Hawkins was helping to lead the charge. Hawkins averaged 22.7 points, 7.4 rebounds, 1.8 assists, 2.1 steals. and 0.8 blocks per game this season. The Bearcats were 31-1 on the year and Hawkins said the team had a great attitude.
Hawkins said the team was at practice getting ready to host the NCAA Regional when they got the news that the tournament was cancelled.
Hawkins said he really feels for the seniors that lost out on their chance to compete in the tournament.
Ryan won the MIAA Defensive Player of the Year honor for the 2nd straight season and was a finalist for the Bevo Francis Award that honors the top small college basketball player in the country. He feels like the comfort level his teammates have developed with each other has allowed him to be a better player.
Hawkins will head into his Senior season with the Bearcats and hopes to earn another chance at competing for another National Championship.
WATERLOO, Iowa (AP) — A business services company in Waterloo has laid off dozens of workers after the coronavirus pandemic upended its recent expansion. VGM Group announced this week that it has eliminated 58 full-time jobs and 15 part-time jobs. The employee-owned company said that it had offered transfers, extended furloughs or early retirement packages to another 17 workers. VGM Group provides purchasing, insurance, health care management, marketing and other services to thousands of business customers across North America.
VGM CEO Mike Mallaro says the cuts are “very difficult for everyone in the VGM family” but necessary.
(Radio Iowa) — The site of a movable restaurant that has moved on, is destined to become a gathering place to link biking and walking trails in the Iowa Great Lakes region. Erin Reed is executive director of the Dickinson County Trails Board. “It runs right along next to our railroad trail, so we’ve been watching that property for some time,” she says. “It’s been for sale for a while and just always thought it would be a great spot to have a trail head.”
The Lake Street Diner in Spirit Lake that sat on the property was moved in December. Reed says her group has gotten a grant to cover the cost of buying and developing the property. “At this time we are looking at different design concepts for a shelter type area that would include restrooms and be somewhat unique to the old rail trail concept,” Reed says, “and also include some landscaping and clean up of the area.”
Reed expects the project to take a couple of years. The city of Spirit Lake sits on the western shore of East Lake Okoboji. The railroad trail being developed in Dickinson AND Osceola Counties will eventually run 37 miles — on land first laid with rail tracks in 1867. The 14-mile Iowa Great Lakes Trail includes a loop through Spirit Lake’s residential and downtown areas.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The U.S. Olympic swimming trials have been rescheduled for June of 2021 in Omaha, Nebraska. USA Swimming announced the dates Friday, less than three weeks after the Tokyo Olympics were postponed until 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic. The trials were initially scheduled for this June in a temporary pool at the CHI Health Center Omaha. The arena in downtown Omaha will host the event for the fourth straight quadrennial. The trials are the sole qualifier for U.S. Olympic team. The top two finishers in each event earn a trip to Tokyo.
Chris Parks has an interview today with Atlantic High School alum and Northwest Missouri State University basketball star Ryan Hawkins about his successful, but crazy, 2019-2020 season.
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(Radio Iowa) — It will likely take a year or more to replace two medical marijuana dispensaries in eastern and western Iowa. Dispensaries in Council Bluffs and Davenport closed without notice on March 30th. The manager of the Iowa Department of Public Health’s medical cannabis program, Owen Parker, says the licenses of the closed dispensaries operated by the Have a Heart company are no longer valid. “There’s no management agreement where transfers or anything like that that can be done. The licenses, once they’re closed, are rescinded. It just starts from scratch however many licenses need to be filled,” Parker says.
Parker says Have A Heart ignored the rules of their contract and failed to give six months’ notice. He says if the company had given proper notice — the re-opening process could have been faster. Parker says the license application process will be underway soon. “And then we will award the license to somebody which then is when they would move forward with their buildout, so from beginning to end you can’t really put an exact timetable on it, it’s easy to say a year or more in all reality, ” according to Parker.
Patients in eastern Iowa will have to get their medical marijuana products from the remaining dispensaries in Sioux City, Waterloo, or Des Moines.
(Radio Iowa) — With the coronavirus moving academic life online, some researchers are shifting their work to benefit health care workers. Madeline Jensen is a University of Iowa graduate student studying sustainable water development. Her research typically focuses on chemical compounds known as PFAS (PEE-faas), but Jensen says those studies aren’t considered critical right now. “That research I pretty much had to stop when the university shut down and I could only work on reading papers about it and writing what I could on it,” Jensen says.
However, since a U-I official approached her lab, Jensen has been working to create air filters for personal protective equipment like masks. This could better safeguard health care workers from breathing in tiny particles that may carry the virus. U-I Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering David Cwiertny says his students usually make filtration devices to take pollutants out of drinking water. They’re adapting to fit with the current crisis, Cwiertny says, as anyone who does research looks for ways their work can help society. Cwiertny says, “What we’re trying to do here is, if there’s an opportunity for us to contribute our expertise and help, rather than just sitting on the sidelines, when we would take that opportunity to see what we can do.”
Cwiertny says normally he’d have about a dozen people in the lab, but now there’s just two to take proper precautions against COVID-19.
(Reporting by Katie Peikes, Iowa Public Radio)
More State and area news from KJAN News Director Ric Hanson.
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The 7:20-a.m. Sportscast with Jim Field.
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