(Radio Iowa) – A fourth-year dental student at the University of Iowa has carefully crafted a work of mosaic art immortalizing Hawkeye basketball star Caitlin Clark — out of more than 700 Rubik’s Cubes. Like millions of other fans, Sioux City native Brian Dang closely follows the Iowa women’s basketball team. He wanted a new project to sink his teeth into while also spotlighting the accomplished Clark, and anyone who’s seen his finished work agrees, it’s a three-point swoosh.

“I used to be an engineer, so I like all these different kinds of 3-D puzzles and I like to suffer a little bit,” Dang says, laughing. “I like to figure out the hard, difficult things, so I got into Rubik’s Cubes because I was pretty bored at home, my parents don’t have internet or anything, and then I decided I just wanted more of a challenge, like trying to make art out of it.” Dang found a bulk supplier who sold him the necessary 720 “mini” Rubik’s Cubes for around 300-dollars. He’s made a few other smaller pieces of art using the plastic cubes as his medium, but none of them were this big. Dang says the portrait took a lot of planning.

“You want to have nice contrasts and stuff because you only have so many colors you can use with a Rubik’s Cube,” Dang says. “I plan it out on a spreadsheet. It’s takes a bit. And then I kind of pixelate the picture a little bit, because all pictures are just pixels. And then once I have that all planned out, it takes maybe three days, and then I go about solving my Rubik’s Cubes to those different colors.” The work features Clark in a white Iowa jersey, with her right hand to her ear, and it’s remarkably realistic. While the Iowa City campus isn’t gigantic, the 25-year-old Dang says he’s never met Clark, nor has he bumped into her between classes, but he hopes their paths will someday cross.

Brian Dang (UI photo)

“Yeah, no, that’d be awesome. If I could get a picture with her with it, and have her autograph it, that’d be amazing,” Dang says. “But both of us probably have busy times because I’m in the clinic a lot here at the school, and then she’s busy playing in all these games, so it’s really hard to get in contact with each other, or even running into each other.” For now, the piece is on display at the U-I dental building. Dang says if the Hawks win the national championship on Sunday, he may be inspired to create another “cubist” Clark that’s even bigger and better.

(Red Oak, Iowa) – Red Oak Police, Thursday afternoon, arrested 26-year-old Devon Lee Smith, of Red Oak. Authorities charged Smith with Assault, with the Intent to Commit Sexual Abuse (an Aggravated Misdemeanor). He was taken into custody at around 4:30-p.m. and transported to the Montgomery County Jail, where Smith’s bond was set at $2,000.

DES MOINES, Iowa [via Iowa Capital Dispatch] — The Iowa Senate Appropriations Committee advanced a bill that would add an exemption to the time limit on filing child sexual abuse lawsuits, allowing former Boy Scouts in the state to be a part of the national settlement against the organization. Senate File 2431, approved unanimously by the committee Thursday, would extend the statute of limitations on civil actions involving child sexual abuse — specifically for “claims against the bankruptcy state of a congressionally chartered organization.”

The exception references the 2020 Boy Scouts of America bankruptcy settlement, allowed by the U.S. Supreme Court to move forward in February, that involves more than 82,000 men who said they were sexually abused by Boy Scouts troop leaders while in the organization as children.

Survivors involved in the 2020 settlement agreement have the ability to recover funds through the Scouting Settlement Trust of $2.46 billion. But Iowans involved may not be able to receive as much compensation as victims in other states. Settlement payouts are determined using multiple factors, including both the details and length of abuse suffered by victims, as well as the state’s statute of limitations on child sexual abuse claims.

Current Iowa law requires that child sexual victims file suit by age 19, or within four years of having knowledge that the abuse resulted in injuries and suffering. Lawyers involved in the settlement said these limitations mean that Iowa has until April 19 to change the law on the statute of limitations, or Iowa victims will receive less compensation from the Boy Scouts settlement than others across the country.

Answering questions from reporters Wednesday, Reynolds said she would be “open” to consideration of the bill if it is passed by the Legislature.

(Radio Iowa) – A senator has a plan that would give the governor authority to appoint the majority of members on commissions that nominate Iowans to be district court judges. Republican Senator Julian Garrett would have the governor appoint six of the 11 members on each of the district court nominating panels. “The process is already politicized from my perspective,” Garrett says. “We’re trying to improve it and fix it.”

A budget bill that’s cleared initial review in the Iowa Senate includes Garrett’s proposed change for district court judicial nominating commissions. Iowa governors appoint judges from lists of nominees submitted by these commissions and Peter Hird of the Iowa A-F-L C-I-O says the change would give the governor more influence over the judicial branch. “Giving the governor the power to appoint the majority of people who are going to nominate judges definitely to me and to our organization gives us a lot of concern.”

Garrett’s proposal also removes the judges from each of the district court nominating commissions. Doug Struyk, of the Iowa State Bar Association, says the perspective of a local district judge provides valuable insight about the lawyers who’re applying to become a judge. “The judge would have interacted with these applicants, seen their temperament, seen their timeliness of filings,” Struyk says, “and I believe that, from someone who’s been in the shoes of a judge, would be particularly good information for the other members of the commission to have when they were reviewing applicants.”

In 2019, Governor Reynolds signed a law that removed the longest serving Iowa Supreme Court justice from the commission that nominates people to serve on the Iowa Court of Appeals AND the Iowa Supreme Court. For the past five years Reynolds has also had the authority to appoint a majority of the members of that STATE judicial nominating commission.