The 7:20-a.m. Sportscast with Jim Field
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The 7:20-a.m. Sportscast with Jim Field
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The area’s latest and/or top news stories at 7:06-a.m. From KJAN News Director Ric Hanson.
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The Iowa Department of Public Health reported 1,336 new positive COVID-19 cases and 62 additional deaths Wednesday. Three deaths occurred in southwest Iowa: One in each of Cass, Montgomery and Pottawattamie Counties.
As of 10 a.m., the health department reported 307,569 total cases, 270,556 total recoveries and 4,394 total deaths since the pandemic began. Positivity rates continue to decline in Iowa. The 14-day rate declined from 12% to 11.6% in the last 24 hours. The 7-day positivity rate increased slightly from 8.4% to 8.5%. State data shows 1,430,371 Iowans have been tested for COVID-19, while 3,421,017 tests have been administered.
COVID-19 hospitalizations are once again at the lowest since mid-October. There are 474 Iowans hospitalized with the virus, down from 490 the previous day. There were 85 patients admitted in the last 24 hours, up from 56 the previous day. The state reports 86 patients in intensive care and 36 patients on ventilators. In RMCC Region 4 (western/southwest Iowa hospitals), 38 are hospitalized with COVID symptoms, 12 are in an ICU, seven people were admitted, and four are currently on a ventilator.
The number of long-term care facilities reporting COVID-19 outbreaks declined from 72 to 71. The state reports 1,880 positive cases and 1,030 recoveries among residents and staff within those facilities. There have been 1,786 deaths reported in Iowa’s care facilities.
In the KJAN listening area, here are the current number positive cases by County; The # of new cases since yesterday {+} – if any; and the total number of deaths in each county to date:
Richard L. Weston, 68, Grant died Monday, January 18th in Council Bluffs. Graveside services for RICHARD L. WESTON will be held 2-p.m. Tuesday, January 26th at the Grant Cemetery. Wolfe-Billings Funeral Chapel in Villisca is in charge of the arrangements.
Open visitation will be held Monday, January 25th at Wolfe-Billings Funeral Chapel from noon to 6 pm, the family will not be present. Memorials can be made to the family.
RICHARD L. WESTON is survived by:
His mother, two sisters and one brother, along with his children and many other family members.
Today: Partly cloudy, windy & warmer. High 45. SW @ 15-30.
Tonight: P/Cldy. Low 28. NW @ 10.
Tomorrow: P/Cldy. High 38. NW @ 10-20.
Friday: P/Cldy. High 28.
Saturday: Mostly cloudy w/a chance of light snow. High near 30.
Tuesday’s High in Atlantic was 39. Our Low was 9. Last year on this date the High in Atlantic was 8 and Low -11. The Record High on this date was 64 in 1895. The Record Low was -26, in 1962.
Two men were arrested on separate charges, Tuesday, in Red Oak. Authorities say 66-year old Harold Arthur Hart, of Red Oak, was arrested at around 2:30-p.m. on a Fremont County warrant for Theft in the 4th degree. Hart was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on behalf of the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office. And, at around 4-p.m., 33-year old Charles Randall Brown, III, of Red Oak, was arrested on a warrant for Violation of Probation. Brown was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on $2,000 bond.
(Radio Iowa) – An Iowan who served nearly three years in the Trump Administration is heading home. Bill Northey resigned as Iowa Ag Secretary in March of 2018 to become Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “It’ll be different waking up now every day not thinking about all the things we need to do at USDA,” Northey says. “There’s other folks that’ll work on that. Now I can start thinking about what I might do next.”
Northey helped draft the agency’s rules for implementing the 2018 Farm Bill and he helped set up the payments to farmers impacted by trade disputes and the pandemic. “Those were all in addition to the Farm Bill programs and the disaster programs that are there to respond in case of weather programs,” Northey says. Northey oversaw a division of the U-S-D-A with 21-thousand employees, operating out of about three-thousand locations and Northey traveled extensively. He visited U-S-D-A offices in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands as well as in 48 of the 50 states — he didn’t make it to Hawaii or Alaska.
Northey says he got to see massive cattle ranches, blackberry farms and other types agriculture he wasn’t familiar with before. “It was very interesting to realize the breadth of agriculture in this country,” Northey says. The biggest surprise for Northey was the intensity of internal agency activity to implement and support U-S-D-A programs. Northey cites the pandemic relief fund as an example.
As the former state ag secretary exits the U-S-D-A, a former Iowa governor is returning. Tom Vilsack served as President Obama’s Secretary of Agriculture for eight years. “It’s really nice to have somebody who knows how the place works and probably has had a little bit of time to think about what he might want to do the next time around, if there was a next time around,” Northey says, “so he’ll hit the ground running.” Northey says he has no idea if his service in the Trump Administration will impact his future prospects.
“It’s kind of interesting in my time in Washington, D.C., sometimes I almost felt farther from politics than I did when I was secretary of ag in Iowa,” Northey says. “There I need to keep track of it when I was out and around. When I got out and around as Under Secretary of USDA, they just asked me about programs.” Northey says he paid less attention to politics — and to Twitter — than he had during his 11 year tenure as state agriculture secretary and he had no comment on Trump’s actions on January 6th.
“I’m probably not the best person to understand either the pieces that happened or the consequences of those,” Northey says. “We’ll see what time brings.” Northey was in the U.S.D.A’s D.C. office building when rioters breached the U.S. Capitol. Northey says the building is at the opposite end of the National Mall from the Capitol and he never felt threatened. Northey’s sister and brother-in-law took over his farming operation near Spirit Lake when Northey left for D.C. in 2018. Northey and his wife are moving back to a townhouse in the Des Moines area with a U-Haul this weekend. Northey says he’s not coming back to retire.
“Not ready to rock on a front porch some place,” Northey says. “Certainly interested in being able to do some other things and we’ll figure those out.” Northey, who is 61, graduated from Iowa State University with an agri-business degree and earned an M-B-A from Southwest Minnesota State. Northey served as president of the National Corn Growers Association in the mid-1990s and won his first term as Iowa Secretary of Agriculture in 2006.
(Radio Iowa) – A proposal to add a gun rights amendment to the state constitution is retracing its path through the Iowa legislature. The proposal has been approved twice before, but a paperwork error in the secretary of state’s office is forcing Republican legislators to pass it a third time before it can be presented to voters in 2022. Richard Rogers of the Iowa Firearms Coalition says the amendment is needed because opponents of gun rights are trying to — in his words “weaponize” the FEDERAL courts.
“At this very moment, serious attempts are being made to shamelessly back the court, turning it into a political tool,” Rogers says. “Should this ever success, the need for state-level protections of the right to keep and bear arms will be critical.” Critics say the proposed amendment goes further than the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Tom Chapman of the Iowa Catholic Conference says it could lead to the repeal of background checks and gun permit requirements.
“We think this ‘strict scrutiny’ language put current regulation in jeopardy,” Chapman says. The Republican-led Iowa Senate overwhelmingly advanced the proposed gun rights amendment last year, but cleared the Iowa House by a narrower margin. Republicans have a larger majority in the Iowa House this year, raising the prospects for easier passage of the proposal.
Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press at 3:38 a.m. CST
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Lottery players are getting another shot at the third-largest jackpot in U.S. history. The Mega Millions top prize has hit an estimated $970 million without a winner Tuesday. The drawing was the biggest in more than two years. The winning numbers are: 10-19-26-28-50 and a Mega Ball of 16. Powerball, the other lottery game offered in most of the U.S., isn’t far behind at $730 million for a drawing Wednesday night. It’s the first time both lottery jackpots have topped $700 million. No one has won the Mega Millions jackpot since Sept. 15. The last Powerball jackpot winner was a day later, on Sept. 16.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A right-wing conspiracy theorist from Iowa who was among the first to break into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 remained in custody Tuesday after a court hearing where his attorneys asked a federal magistrate judge to let him go home until his trial. Douglas A. Jensen, 41, appeared in court for a detention hearing via video from jail in Des Moines on Tuesday. An FBI agent says Jensen said in an interview two days after the riot that he want to DC to receive big news from Donald Trump and that would include the arrests of Vice President Mike Pence and certain members of Congress. A judge says she will issue a ruling on Wednesday. A second Iowa man, Leo Kelly, 35, of Cedar Rapids, arrested for his involvement in the Capitol riot was released Tuesday afternoon.
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Prosecutors have added five felony weapons and assault counts against a white man already charged with attempted murder for shooting into a car carrying four Black girls during a rally for President Trump in Iowa. The Polk County Attorney’s Office has filed a formal charging document against 25-year-old Michael McKinney who has been jailed since his arrest hours after the Dec. 6 shooting near the Iowa Capitol in Des Moines. In addition to attempted murder, the document charges McKinney with intimidation with a dangerous weapon, willful injury, assault while participating in a felony, reckless use of a firearm and going armed with intent. He has said he fired in self-defense.
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — Police in Cedar Rapids have announced an arrest in the December shooting death of an 18-year-old woman at an apartment complex. Police say in a news release that 20-year-old Larenzo Laroy Burnett was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of involuntary manslaughter and witness tampering in the fatal shooting of Marisa Doolin. Authorities found Doolin in the apartment Dec. 22 with a gunshot wound, and she died four days later. Police believe Burnett pointed a gun at Doolin, but that it accidentally discharged. Investigators say Burnett also warned a witness not to talk to police about the shooting. Police say Burnett was already in the Linn County Jail on unrelated charges when he was arrested Tuesday morning.
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