From the Associated Press (11:20 a.m.):
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Des Moines police say they have arrested six teenagers in a shooting outside a school that killed a 15-year-old boy and seriously injured two teenage girls. Police say gunshots fired Monday afternoon outside East High School came from several shooters from multiple vehicles. Police said Tuesday that those arrested range in age from 14 to 17. Police identified the 15-year-old killed as Jose David Lopez of Des Moines. Police say he was the intended target of the shooting. He was not a student at East. Police say the other two shot were females aged 16 and 18, who both attend East, and were in a group that included Lopez.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The Iowa House Democratic leader and the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee are accusing the committee’s chairman and House Speaker Pat Grassley of violating ethics rules that prohibit lobbyists from working for the state. House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst and Rep. Mary Wolfe said Tuesday that Judiciary Committee Chairman Steven Holt hired Republican attorney Alan Ostergren to assist with an investigation. Ostergren says Wolfe and Konfrst are playing politics and that he’s not an employee of the state but an independent contractor. Ostergren is registered as a lobbyist. He signed an agreement dated March 1 to work for the committee for $400 an hour, up to $2,000 a month or more.
Authorities say four of the seven people killed in devastating storms that tore through central Iowa were members of the same family who were huddled together in the pantry of a home that was razed by a powerful tornado. Family members said two children, their father and their grandmother all died when a tornado hit the grandparents’ home Saturday near rural Winterset. Four other family members were hurt but survived. The children and their parents, from Blue Springs, Missouri, were visiting their grandmother, 63-year-old Melissa Bazley, when the tornado hit. Two others killed in the tornado lived just down the street.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The state of Iowa will pay eight men working for the Iowa Department of Revenue just over $1 million to settle their complaints that they were secretly photographed by a male colleague in a restroom and that supervisors didn’t take the matter seriously. The State Appeal Board voted Monday to settle with the men who will each receive payments ranging from $70,000 to $200,000. The total state payout comes to $1.01 million. The state previously settled with three other men who had filed a federal lawsuit for $900,000. The man who took the photos, Kenneth Kerr, was fired, pleaded guilty to invasion of privacy and sexually motivated stalking and was sentenced to two years of probation.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Officials announced they have identified bird flu in a commercial flock of 50,000 turkeys in northwest Iowa, the state’s second case of a virus that has been identified in multiple states. Iowa agriculture officials and the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Monday confirmed the case in Buena Vista County, about 100 miles north of the case identified March 1 in a backyard flock of 42 ducks and chickens in Pottawattamie County. Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a disaster proclamation for Buena Vista County to allow state resources to help with disposal of the affected flock and disinfection of the farm. Officials on Monday confirmed Nebraska’s first case this year, in a wild goose near Holmes Lake in Lincoln.
SAN DIEGO (AP) — A California judge has ordered an online, for-profit university and its former parent company to pay $22 million in penalties, saying they misled students. The San Diego Superior Court ruled Thursday in favor of the state of California in its lawsuit against Ashford University and its then-parent company Zovio, Inc. The University of Arizona has since acquired the university and rebranded the online school, the University of Arizona Global Campus. It is an independent university that is operated in affiliation with the University of Arizona. The court said Ashford gave false or misleading information about the school’s cost, financial aid, pace of degrees, among other things. Zovio did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
