From the Associated Press (11:20 a.m.):
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) – A heartwarming tradition launched at Iowa home football games five years ago is getting another feel-good layer. The University of Iowa announced Wednesday that patients at UI Stead Family Children’s Hospital will get to pick the songs that accompany the Hawkeye Wave, at which fans attending games at Iowa’s Kinnick Stadium wave to patients at the adjacent hospital. The plan was announced two months after the university sought to have Hawkeye fans vote for the next song to accompany the Hawkeye Wave. The fans, in turn, suggested letting the kids pick. Now at every Iowa home game this year, the hospital’s Kid Captain – a Children’s Hospital patient who is is picked to be honored at each Iowa football game – will help select a new song to accompany the Hawkeye Wave.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – The Iowa attorney general’s office says a state Supreme Court decision that requires a 24-hour waiting period before an abortion won’t take effect until next month, but the state’s main abortion provider says it will immediately require the waiting period. A spokesman for the Iowa attorney general’s office on Wednesday said last week’s ruling would not take effect until the case has been returned to the lower court judge for further action, likely around July 8. After the ruling, Planned Parenthood North Central States officials had said the organization would immediately implement the waiting period. Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Emily Bisek says despite the attorney general’s belief that the waiting period wasn’t required yet, it would stick by its decision.
YARMOUTH, Iowa (AP) – Crews have recovered the body of a man who was buried by piles of grain and debris from a collapsed grain silo in southeastern Iowa. The collapse happened just before 8 a.m. Tuesday at a grain elevator at Yarmouth. Des Moines County emergency management officials announced the man’s body was found about 1:15 p.m. Wednesday. Mediapolis Fire Department Deputy Chief Jeff Kerr told the Hawk Eye that two men had just unloaded a semitrailer full of grain when they heard a loud bang and began running as the silo partially collapsed. One of the men escaped. The name of the man who died has not been released.
SPIRIT LAKE, Iowa (AP) – A woman has been found guilty of first-degree murder and a man sentenced to prison for the strangulation death of another woman nearly two years ago in her Lake Park home. The Sioux City Journal reports that a judge found 27-year-old Allison Decker guilty Tuesday of the murder count, as well as theft and conspiracy to commit theft in the death of 25-year-old Angel Bastman. Bastman’s body was found in her home on Dec. 22, 2020. Decker’s codefendant, 25-year-old Justice Berntson, was sentenced Tuesday to 25 years in prison for attempted murder in Bastman’s death. Investigators say all three were at Bastman’s home when Decker and Bastman fought. Prosecutors say Decker strangled Bastman with a belt, and Bernston did nothing to stop it.
RANDALIA, Iowa (AP) – A northeast Iowa farmer has pleaded not guilty to livestock neglect after 3,000 hogs died on his property. Derek David Smith filed the written plea Monday in Fayette County District Court. Court records say the 41-year-old Smith was hired by Valley Farms to care for the hogs on his property near Randalia. On June 2, authorities found more than 3,000 feeder hogs dead at his confinement operation. Court records say the animals died from lack of feed and another 200 hogs had to be euthanized for heath reasons. The charge is a serious misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail and a $2,560 fine.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Iowa deer hunters will be allowed to use semi-automatic weapons including AR-15 rifles to kill deer in more parts of the state during a newly created antlerless season in January under a bill signed by Gov. Kim Reynolds. Iowa lawmakers passed the bill in May and it was signed by Reynolds on Friday. Advocates say the new law will help control the deer population and respond to complaints that excess deer eat corn and are hazardous to motorists. Iowa has had January deer hunting seasons in the past but they were limited to a few counties where the deer population was more of a problem. The bill is expected to expand the January hunt counties from five to as many as 15, depending on rules from the Department of Natural Resources.
