DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The Democratic National Committee will recommend scrapping state plans to offer virtual, telephone-based caucuses in 2020 due to security concerns, sources tell The Associated Press. The recommendation from DNC leaders makes it highly unlikely that the party’s powerful Rules and Bylaws Committee would allow Iowa and Nevada to proceed with their current plans for virtual caucuses next February. DNC officials and some presidential campaigns have raised concerns about possible hacking.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa Congresswoman Cindy Axne says the patience of Iowa farmers is wearing thin as President Donald Trump’s trade policies damage soybean markets and his administration’s ethanol policy reduces corn demand. Axne, a Democrat, convened a meeting with farmers and agriculture groups at the Iowa Capitol on Thursday with USDA Under Secretary Bill Northey, a Republican and former Iowa secretary of agriculture. Northey says Trump realizes farmers are stressed in part by administration policies.

MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa (AP) — It took only seconds for a towering coal-fired electricity plant in Marshalltown to be reduced to rubble. The Sutherland Generating Station was imploded Thursday morning, with explosions causing the structure to crash to the ground and send up a plume of dust. The plant, owned by Alliant Energy, had operated since the 1950s but ceased operation in 2017 after a natural gas power plant came online.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa funeral home is calling on families to pick up the unclaimed cremated remains of nearly 100 people that it has been keeping in a locked closet for years, some since the mid-1990s. Lanae Strovers, of Hamilton’s Funeral Home in Des Moines, told TV station KCCI that she has already made arrangements for 200 sets of the unclaimed ashes but is still trying make arrangements for 91 others. Any that remain unclaimed will be buried in a cemetery during a Sept. 26 service.