Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press

JOHNSTON, Iowa (AP) — Gov. Kim Reynolds’ administration arranged coronavirus testing for employees at the suburban office of a large pork company whose owners are her top donors. One Polk County supervisor says the July 13 testing at the administrative office of Iowa Select Farms in West Des Moines looks like special treatment for a campaign donor. Owners Jeff and Deb Hansen have donated nearly $300,000 to Reynolds’ campaigns for governor, including a $175,000 check in 2017 and a $50,000 donation last month. Company spokeswoman Jen Sorenson said Iowa Select sought the state’s help with testing after “a number of individuals were found to be potentially exposed to a positive employee.” Reynolds says companies who requested testing were not turned down.

JOHNSTON, Iowa (AP) — Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds says the federal government is promising states a 17% increase in vaccine doses starting next week, potentially boosting the number of shots available amid frustration that eligible people have been unable to get vaccinated. Reynolds says officials in President Joe Biden’s administration promised governors in a call Tuesday that the federal government would increase state allocations to accelerate the national vaccination program. The increased federal supply would raise Iowa’s weekly doses of the Moderna vaccine to 25,800 a week beginning Feb. 8 and will be in addition to the current 19,500 dose allocation of Pfizer vaccine. Iowa on Wednesday reported eight additional deaths, raising the total to 4,500.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A successor has been picked for Republican state Sen. Mariannette Miller-Meeks after she was elected to the U.S. House by just six votes. WHO reports that Republican Adrian Dickey defeated Democrat Mary Stewart in a special election Tuesday night to represent Miller-Meeks’s former district in southeast Iowa. Dickey is currently president of the family-owned Dickey Transport based out of the town of Packwood in Jefferson County. With the win, Republicans maintain a 14-seat majority in the Iowa Senate.

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A federal judge says the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers must outline its plans after an appeals court confirmed that the Dakota Access pipeline is operating without a key permit. Pipeline opponents want it shut down immediately. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg has set a status hearing for Feb. 10 to discuss the impact of Tuesday’s opinion by the D.C. Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals that upheld Boasberg’s ruling ordering the Corps to conduct a full environmental impact review. Boasberg said in his one-sentence order the the Corps needs to show how it “expects to proceed given the vacating” of a federal permit granting easement for the pipeline to cross beneath Lake Oahe.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Cloris Leachman, a native Iowan and character actor whose depth of talent brought her an Oscar for “The Last Picture Show” and Emmys for her comedic work in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and other TV series, has died. She was 94. Millions of viewers knew her as the self-absorbed neighbor Phyllis in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

FILE – Cloris Leachman arrives at the 13th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on Jan. 28, 2007, in Los Angeles. Leachman, a character actor whose depth of talent brought her an Oscar for the “The Last Picture Show” and Emmys for her comedic work in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and other TV series, has died. She was 94. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)

She also appeared as the mother of Timmy on the “Lassie” series. She played a frontier prostitute in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” a crime spree family member in “Crazy Mama,” and the infamous Frau Blücher in Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein.”

JOHNSTON, Iowa (AP) w/additional info. from RADIO IOWA  — Gov. Kim Reynolds’ administration arranged coronavirus testing for employees at the suburban office of a large pork company whose owners are her top donors. One Polk County supervisor says the July 13 testing at the administrative office of Iowa Select Farms in West Des Moines looks like special treatment for a campaign donor. Owners Jeff and Deb Hansen have donated nearly $300,000 to Reynolds’ campaigns for governor, including a $175,000 check in 2017 and a $50,000 donation last month.

Company spokeswoman Jen Sorenson said Iowa Select sought the state’s help with testing after “a number of individuals were found to be potentially exposed to a positive employee.” Reynolds says companies who requested testing were not turned down.

Reynolds says any allegation that her administration played favorites is unjustified. “There’s criteria. You qualify. To my knowledge, nobody was told no,” Reynolds says. “If you called and wanted to try to facilitate a way to get your employees tested so that you could ensure them that they were working in a safe environment, that’s what companies were doing and we were doing everything that we could to facilitate that and I will make no apologies for doing that. None.”

State Auditor Rob Sand has announced he will investigate whether other another donor to the governor secured state testing resources for a company in Waverly, while the state denied the local health department’s request for rapid testing elsewhere in the county. Those allegations were first reported on the Bleeding Heartland blog.

(Updated) KALISPELL, Mont. (AP) — A Montana man is facing a $9.9 million fine from the Federal Communications Commission after he sent racist, anti-Semitic and harassing robocalls to tens of thousands of phones across eight states.  The Daily Inter Lake reported Wednesday that the 2018 calls targeted Black and Jewish politicians, a journalist, the murder case against an avowed white supremacist who drove into a crowd in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Rhodes also allegedly made hundreds of calls to Iowans who were mourning the death of murdered college student Mollie Tibbetts. Tibbetts, a 20-year-old psychology student at the University of Iowa, went missing in the summer of 2018 after going for a jog in her hometown of Brooklyn. Her body was found in a cornfield during the summer of 2018.

Her accused killer, Cristhian Bahena Rivera, who was 25 at the time, is Mexican national living illegally in the United States. The calls allegedly made by Rhodes said Tibbetts would have wanted to kill people the message referred to with racial slurs (meaning Mexicans/Latinos).

The FCC announced the fine on Jan. 14 and said Scott D. Rhodes repeatedly violated the Truth in Caller ID Act by manipulating the calls to make them appear local.

UPDATE: The phone lines were restored Wednesday evening.

Original Post – Officials with Cass County Health System (CCHS), Wednesday afternoon, said CCHS was experiencing phone issues and are not able to make any outbound calls. The issue was being worked on. If you left a message with CCHS, or are expecting a call from them, please note someone will be in touch with you as soon as the phone system is up and running.

Officials with the Glenwood Police Department, Wednesday, said 23-year old Dylan Harris, of Malvern, was arrested last Saturday, for OWI/2nd offense. His cash/surety bond was set at $2,000.

(Radio Iowa) – In a little over six weeks, more than 200-thousand Iowans have been vaccinated for COVID-19, but in a state of more than three-million residents, the waiting list is long. The state will enter the next phase of inoculations next week and Governor Kim Reynolds says a new Vaccine Dashboard is being added to the state’s coronavirus website — at coronavirus-dot-iowa-dot-gov.

While the two companies that are now distributing vaccine in Iowa require a main injection and then a booster either 21 or 28 days later, Reynolds says a third company’s vaccine is expected to gain F-D-A approval next week that’s a single-dose version. Demand for the COVID vaccines is high and many people are wondering how and when they can get their shot. Reynolds steers them to the same online Vaccine Dashboard.

The governor says the federal government is planning to boost the number of vaccines being shipped to all states by about 16-percent starting in February. In Iowa, that’s about 63-hundred more doses per week. Reynolds says the number of people hospitalized for treatment of COVID-19 in Iowa is down to around 400, which is far below the peak of 15-hundred back in November.

DES MOINES – Gov. Kim Reynolds proclaimed today (Jan. 27, 2021), as Donna Reed Day, exactly 100 years after the Oscar-winning actress made her earthly debut in Denison, Iowa. She passed away in 1986, but her legacy endures. In her announcement, the governor “encouraged Iowans to be like Donna Reed and follow their dreams with integrity, courtesy, equity and humanity,” echoing the Donna Reed Foundation’s mission to inspire young people to serve their communities and pursue careers in the performing arts.

Donna Reed

The proclamation via Facebook Live capped off a series of video tributes from Reed’s friends and family and kicked off a year of programs to celebrate the centennial, including commemorative displays at the Donna Reed Heritage Museum in Denison and the State Historical Museum of Iowa in Des Moines. The state museum also plans to host an online presentation on March 25, when Reed’s daughter, Mary Owen of Iowa City, will share rarely seen family photos from her mother’s early days in Iowa. Other events are in the works for December, when Reed’s most popular movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” will mark its 75th anniversary.

Donnabelle Mullenger was just 17 when she left Iowa and packed her bags for California. She won a Los Angeles beauty pageant, which landed her a spot in the Rose Bowl Parade, a photo on the front page of the Los Angeles Times and, soon after, a contract with MGM Studios. The studio changed her name to Donna Reed for her first movie, “The Get-Away,” when she was 20, and the name stuck.

Reed won an Academy Award in the 1954 movie “From Here to Eternity” and co-founded her own TV production company, which produced “The Donna Reed Show” from 1958 through 1966. Back then, few women held executive roles in Hollywood. “Donna Reed’s life really was wonderful,” said Chris Kramer, director of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs, including the State Historical Society of Iowa and Produce Iowa, the state office of film and media production. “She was an Iowa icon, a gifted actress, a savvy businesswoman and a visionary humanitarian who always kept in touch with her hometown. We can all learn from her example.”

Extra’s:

• Visit the Facebook page for Iowa Culture to watch a short tribute with stories from her friends and family plus a proclamation from Gov. Kim Reynolds.
• “100 Years of Donna Reed” Noon March 25 – A webinar featuring rarely seen family photos shared by Reed’s daughter, Mary Owen, and Donna Reed Foundation member Kurt Lee, with State Curator Leo Landis. This event is part of the State Historical Society of Iowa’s “Iowa History 101” series and the year-long commemoration of Iowa’s 175th year of statehood. Registration is free but required.
• “Hollywood in the Heartland”Ongoing – An exhibit at the State Historical Museum of Iowa, showcasing Iowa’s history with the silver screen. A handful of movie-related sites can be found statewide on a new featured tour on the free Iowa Culture mobile app, which highlights more than 3,500 art, film and history sites in all 99 counties.