From the Associated Press:
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — A growing number of school districts in the U.S. are using federal pandemic funding on athletics projects. One school district in Iowa is spending $100,000 on a weight room renovation, while another in Wisconsin is spending $1.6 million on new synthetic turf fields. School officials argue the projects support students’ physical and mental health, but critics tell The Associated Press the spending clashes with the intent of the pandemic relief. Education experts say the funding should go toward tutoring and other costs to help students recover learning loss. Some critics blame state and federal officials for failing to make sure the money is used appropriately.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa public health officials posted another 91 deaths from the coronavirus, bringing the state total to more than 6,600. Of those deaths reported Wednesday, two occurred earlier in the year and the remaining 89 were people who have died since early August. Iowa now has recorded 6,654 deaths, and its death rate since the beginning of the pandemic last year ranks 25th in the nation. Iowa has a seven-day moving average of 1,411 cases per day with 626 people hospitalized, including 141 in intensive care. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says all 99 counties continue to be in the high rate of spread category. The state reported more than 9,000 new positive tests in the past week with 23% of them children.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts joined eight other Republican governors on at the U.S.-Mexico border to criticize Democratic President Joe Biden’s handling of immigration issues. The governors called on Biden to take a number of actions, including building a border wall supported by former Republican President Donald Trump, requiring those seeking asylum to remain in Mexico instead of being allowed into the United States and prohibiting the entry of anyone who potentially poses a health risk. Iowa Democratic Party Chair Ross Wilburn said in a statement that Reynolds’ trip to the border was nothing more “than a political stunt and a distraction from her failed leadership.” Reynolds responded that Biden “overturned all the policies that worked.”
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Police in Des Moines say an officer shot a knife-wielding woman who advanced on him and refused commands to drop the blade. Police say in a news release that the shooting happened around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in a business district west of downtown after a man called 911 to report that a woman tried to stab him as he was walking in the 1400 block of Walnut Street. The officer who arrived to help reported that the woman advanced on him while ignoring his commands to drop the knife, leading him to shoot her. She was taken to a hospital, where she was being treated for her wounds. Police have not released her name or medical condition.
DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) — A Davenport man charged with killing a woman as she was leaving a civil rights protest has agreed to plead deal that replaces his first-degree murder charge with a charge of attempted murder. The Quad-City Times reports that a judge on Tuesday accepted the plea agreement signed by 22-year-old Parker Belz and prosecutors. Belz is charged in the death of Italia Marie Kelly. She had joined a protest on May 31, 2020, but decided to leave because the gathering was becoming unruly. Police say she was shot in the back as she was getting into her car. Belz has been held without bond since his arrest last year.
SHREWSBURY, Mo. (AP) — Prosecutors have dropped a charge of abandoning a corpse against a Missouri woman arrested in connection with the 2018 stabbing death of a man behind a Shrewsbury Walmart. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that the case against Abigail Miller, of Webster Groves, has been dismissed after prosecutors determined that they could not prove all of the elements required for a conviction. Miller was charged in the death of 33-year-old Justin Hughes. Police say Hughes and Miller met up with a third person, Robin Holland, of Spirit Lake, Iowa, behind the store in July 2018 to do drugs when an argument broke out and Holland repeatedly stabbed Hughes. The 31-year-old Holland was convicted in August of manslaughter and other counts and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
