Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press at 3:40 a.m. CST

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa added 41 COVID-19 deaths Thursday as three more long-term care facilities reported virus outbreaks. KCCI reports that the Iowa Department of Public Health reported 3,331 new positive COVID-19 cases as of 10 a.m. to bring the total to 222,278. Long-term care facilities have been particularly hard hit, with cases in them accounting for 1,038 of the state’s 2,312 deaths. The three new facilities reporting outbreaks brings the total that have been hit to 152.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — The historically close race for Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District seat has gotten even closer. Democrat Rita Hart has cut Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ lead to eight votes out of more than 394,400 cast, with recount boards in all but one of the district’s 24 counties reporting the results of their recounts. On Wednesday, Hart netted 26 votes in Scott County and another vote in Jasper County after their recount boards adjourned. Clinton County’s recount board will meet on Saturday to finish reviewing about 5,000 absentee ballots.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — The Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska is creating the nation’s largest tribal national park on a forested bluff overlooking the Missouri River and a historic site of its people. The tribe says the 444-acre park will allow it to tell the story of the Ioway people and provide a rustic getaway where people can hike, camp and bird-watch. The Omaha World-Herald reports that the Ioway Tribal National Park will overlook a historic trading village once used by the Ioway people to barter for buffalo hides and pipestones with other tribes. That site includes three burial mounds that date back 3,000 years.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — A University of Iowa fraternity has been suspended for hazing, with a report citing verbal abuse and and an incident where new members were required to drink dangerously high amounts of alcohol. The university says the violations were by the Acacia Fraternity. The Cedar Rapids Gazette obtained an investigative report through a public records request. The suspension lasts through 2024. One allegation said that in the spring semester, new members were ordered to stay in the fraternity house attic until they consumed alcohol that included 60 to 90 cans of beer, along with vodka and a gallon of a drink called Jungle Juice. Several new members got sick.

Police in Council Bluffs late Thursday night, said a shots-fired incident took place outside of a gas station/convenience store at around 9:46-p.m.  As the results of an investigation, authorities say an adult female patron went into the gas station at 1305 N 25th Street for coffee. Upon returning to her vehicle, she noticed a white male party walking rapidly towards her. The male began to fire shots at the female, so she drove away fleeing the area.

The victim’s vehicle was struck by two rounds, but she was not physically injured. The motive for the incident was unclear at the time of the report. The suspect fled the area and has not been located. The suspect was a white male, no further description. He was with two white females and they were in a newer model black Mitsubishi SUV.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Council Bluffs Police Department at 712‐328‐ STOP. The victim was aware of what was going on around her. She took immediate decisive action, preventing any further harm to herself. Bluffs Police remind citizens, that “As the holidays approach, criminals tend to look for easy marks. Be vigilant and have a plan of action to keep yourself out of harm’s way.”

(Radio Iowa) – University of Iowa president Bruce Harreld — preparing to retire next year — predicts the competition among the state’s higher education community for scarce state support will escalate in coming years.  “Resources have been constrained for many a year,” Harreld says, “and they’re apt to stay that way.” The state’s community colleges, private colleges and universities as well as the three state-supported universities in Ames, Cedar Falls and Iowa City also will be competing for a smaller pool of potential students. That’s because the birth rate dropped during the so-called “Great Recession” of 2007 and 2008.

The number of high school graduates is projected to decline by 15 percent by 2026. “There is going to be a lot of hand-wringing here as some of these headwinds play themselves out,” Harreld says. “I’m worried that there could well be a struggle for a number of us.” Harreld says the University of Iowa should position itself as a “destination university” and compete for students internationally as well as in-state and around the U.S.

“The better we are, I think the better we’ll be able to weather the headwinds that are coming at us,” Harreld says. Harreld is a former business executive who was hired to lead the University of Iowa five years ago. A search for his successor has begun and Harreld has said he’ll stay in the job until his replacement is named.

(Radio Iowa) – An Algona High School student and her teacher are asking for the public’s help in finding information about a graduate of the school who died nearly 59 years ago. Marine Corps Private William George Turner died in 1941 following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Algona history teacher Brian Connick says he and his student, Isabelle Gibbs, haven’t been able to find any family still living in the area. “Basically, we know he graduated from Algona High School in 1936, so boy, if there was somebody out there that knew of someone that was from that graduating class or someone that might have known the Turner family or Mr. Turner himself, we would love to be able to sit down and talk to them and try to get a little richer understanding of who he was as an individual here in Algona.”

Connick and his student were scheduled to go to Hawaii this past June for an event sponsored by the National History Day organization, but the trip has been postponed until next June, due to the pandemic. Connick’s student is scheduled to give a eulogy for Private Turner at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, where he is buried. “That eulogy is going to include information from his background living here in Algona, his military life,” Connick says, “his training and his service in World War II which is unfortunately very short because of his injuries that took place at Pearl Harbor and his subsequent death of December 12th of 1941.”

Connick and Gibbs are one of 16 student-teacher teams that will travel to Hawaii next summer to take part in the “World War II in the Pacific Student-Teacher Institute.” “Boy, we’d love to hear from anyone that knew Private Turner,” Connick says. Turner was born in February of 1919 and was 22 when he died at Pearl Harbor. The Mason City Globe-Gazette reported at the time that Turner was the first Algona citizen to die in the war. The newspaper account listed his mother, brothers named Robert and Lee and a sister named Ruth as his survivors.