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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa Supreme Court decision is holding back the state's solidly Republican Legislature and governor from banning abortion if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. Iowa is among GOP-controlled states that would be expected to ban abortion, except for state high court decisions recognizing the right under the state constitutions. The issue is most immediate in Iowa, where a court now dominated by Republican appointees is expected to decide in the coming weeks whether to uphold the ruling, decided just four years...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A man serving a 25-year prison sentence for rigging computers to win lottery jackpots for himself, friends and family will be released from an Iowa prison on parole after serving nearly five years, but he could be forced to return to prison in another state if he doesn't pay required restitution. Eddie Tipton appears to owe about $1.6 million in restitution in four states and said in court documents filed in January 2020 that he couldn't pay. As of a 2019 court document, he had paid less than $2,000 toward the states' r...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Nestled between corn dog stands, animal barns and booths touting hot tubs and John Deere tractors, a Hy-Vee pharmacist and several nurses have been administering COVID-19 vaccines at the Iowa State Fair to anyone eligible that wants one. Their booth didn't have the long lines of more popular attractions, but by Monday more than 150 people had received a shot since the 11-day fair started on Thursday. More than 400,000 people attended the fair in its first four days. Still, in a state where only half of the population i...
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Rural America lost more population in the latest census, highlighting an already severe worker shortage in the nation's farming and ranching regions and drawing calls from those industries for immigration reform to help ease the problem. The census data released last week showed that population gains in many rural areas were driven by increases in Hispanic and Latino residents, many of whom come as immigrants to work on farms or in meatpacking plants or to start their own businesses. "We've struggled on this issue for a l...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A soil scientist whose research led to improved food production and a better understanding of how atmospheric carbon can be held in the soil to help combat climate change was named this year's recipient of the World Food Prize on Thursday. Rattan Lal is a professor of soil science at Ohio State University and founding director of the university's Carbon Management and Sequestration Center. World Food Prize Foundation President Barbara Stinson announced Lal as the winner. The ceremony was held online rather than live i...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — As if trips to the grocery store weren't nerve-wracking enough, U.S. shoppers lately have seen the costs of meat, eggs and even potatoes soar as the coronavirus has disrupted processing plants and distribution networks. Overall, the cost of food bought to eat at home skyrocketed by the most in 46 years, and analysts caution that meat prices in particular could remain high as slaughterhouses struggle to maintain production levels while implementing procedures intended to keep workers healthy. While price spikes for s...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Meatpacking plants that had to briefly close due to coronavirus outbreaks have been back up and running for weeks, but production backlogs are forcing farmers to euthanize thousands of hogs that can't be processed, drawing complaints from animal welfare advocates. In Iowa, where nearly one-third of the nation's hogs are raised, the temporary closure of slaughterhouses led to a backup of about 600,000 pigs, state Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig said. Those plants now are operating at about 80% capacity, but that's not e...
URBANDALE, Iowa (AP) — Vice President Mike Pence spoke Friday to a group of faith leaders in Iowa about the importance of resuming religious services, saying the cancellations in the name of slowing the spread of the coronavirus have "been a burden" for congregants. Pence spoke with the religious leaders and Republican officials during a brief visit to the Des Moines area. He was set to speak later in the day with agricultural and food company executives. "It's been a source of heartache for people across the country," Pence told about a d...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — After spending two decades raising pigs to send to slaughterhouses, Dean Meyer now faces the mentally draining, physically difficult task of killing them even before they leave his northwest Iowa farm. Meyer said he and other farmers across the Midwest have been devastated by the prospect of euthanizing hundreds of thousands of hogs after the temporary closure of giant pork production plants due to the coronavirus. The unprecedented dilemma for the U.S. pork industry has forced farmers to figure out how to kill healthy h...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Two doctors and other former employees of an Iowa care center for people with intellectual disabilities have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against a state agency and several officials, alleging a conspiracy to silence complaints about sexual arousal research that included using pornographic material that they claim exploited fragile and dependent residents. The allegations center on Jerry Rea, the former superintendent of the Glenwood Resource Center, a researcher hired in 2017 by the state of Iowa from Kansas. L...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said Friday that recent flooding in the state has caused an estimated $1.6 billion in damage, pushing the total costs from the devastating Midwest flooding to at least $3 billion. The ongoing flooding along the Missouri River has damaged thousands of homes and inundated vast swaths of agricultural land with water in Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri. The flooding, which followed heavy rains and snowmelt this month, has also been blamed for three deaths. Reynolds said she sent a letter asking President D...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — As some communities along the Missouri River start to shift their focus to flood recovery after a late-winter storm, residents in two Iowa cities are stuck in crisis mode after their treatment plants shut down and left them in need of fresh water. Tanker trucks from the Iowa National Guard and a private company are hauling water into Hamburg and Glenwood, said Lucinda Parker, a spokeswoman with Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management. Many evacuated from flooded areas in the southwestern part of the state are s...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — American farmers still working to get out their remaining soybeans after a weather-plagued harvest season are struggling to figure out what to do with a record crop now their traditionally dominant export market is largely closed. Usually by this point in the year, 100-car trains filled with North Dakota soybeans would be moving to ports on the West Coast destined for China. But this year is different, after China all but stopped buying U.S. soybeans in response to President Donald Trump's trade tariffs . Fearful of e...
FAIRFIELD, Iowa (AP) — Small family operated dairy farms with cows freely grazing on verdant pastures are going out of business as large confined animal operations with thousands of animals lined up in assembly-line fashion are expanding into the organic market. Many traditional small-scale organic farmers are determined to fight back against the industry transformation by appealing to consumers to look closely at the organic milk they buy to make sure it comes from a farm that meets the idyllic expectations portrayed on the cartons. While the...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Many farmers remain critical of President Donald Trump's tariffs and the damage done to commodity prices and markets but were appreciative Tuesday that he offered to provide some cash to help offset their losses. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a $12 billion three-part plan that would borrow money from the U.S. Treasury to pay producers of soybeans, sorghum, corn, wheat, cotton, dairy, and hogs. The USDA also will buy the surplus of commodities that would otherwise have been exported and distribute them t...
MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa (AP) — Thousands of people were without power Friday after a flurry of unexpected tornadoes swept through central Iowa, injuring at least 17 people and flattening buildings in three cities. The storms even surprised weather forecasters when they hit the region Thursday afternoon, causing extensive damage to a manufacturing plant and prompting the evacuation of a hospital. The National Weather Service said Friday that at least five tornadoes and likely more struck. Meteorologist Jeff Johnson said it will take days to d...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Supporters of the nation's strictest abortion law are hoping a lawsuit filed against the Iowa measure will bring the issue back before the U.S. Supreme Court, but constitutional experts say that's unlikely because of a legal maneuver by abortion-rights groups. The Iowa affiliates of the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit this week challenging the constitutionality of a law set to go in effect on July 1 that would prohibit most abortions in the state once a fetal heartbeat is d...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa ethanol and biodiesel producers warned President Donald Trump on Friday that imposing restrictions on biofuels production "would be viewed as a declaration of war on rural America." The Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, a group representing the state's 43 ethanol and 12 biodiesel refineries, wrote a letter to Sens. Charles Grassley and Joni Ernst on Friday. It called on them to tell Trump that limiting biofuel production would be a "complete abdication of his repeated promises" to protect the renewable fuel standard...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa man threatened by city officials with legal action for saying on a website that his hometown smelled like "rancid dog food" won a free-speech lawsuit Thursday when a federal judge prohibited the city from further threats and awarded him damages. Josh Harms, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, filed suit in U.S. District Court earlier this month asking a judge to block Sibley officials from suing him. City officials said they'd sue if he didn't stop criticizing the town's odor problem f...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — From hog producers in Iowa to apple growers in Washington state and winemakers in California, farmers expressed deep disappointment Friday over being put in the middle of a potential trade war with China by the president many of them helped elect. After President Donald Trump announced plans to impose tariffs on products including Chinese steel, Beijing responded Friday with a threat to slap an equal 25 percent charge on U.S. products such as pork, and a 15 percent tariff on such things as wine, apples, ethanol and s...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Federal government regulators proposed changes Friday in the way most hogs slaughtered for meat in the United States are processed in a series of new rules that officials say improve industry practices but critics say could imperil food safety. The new rules would allow hog slaughter plants to voluntarily join a new proposed inspection system that would put plant employees in charge of determining which animals are unfit for processing. Government inspectors who currently perform this function would be moved to other a...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa farmer-turned-reality television star is fighting to avoid prison after driving his pickup into the back of a tractor and killing a neighbor. Chris Soules, who became known as "Prince Farming" during his 2015 appearance on "The Bachelor" and also appeared on "The Bachelorette" and "Dancing With The Stars," lost a legal battle Friday in the felony case against him. A judge dismissed his constitutional challenge to an Iowa law requiring the surviving driver in a fatal accident to remain at the scene until police a...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — As Americans prepare to consume some 45 million turkeys on Thanksgiving, an animal rights group asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday to require more humane treatment for turkeys, chicken and other poultry as the birds are sent to slaughter. California-based Mercy For Animals filed a petition with the USDA that seeks to have poultry covered under the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act. The 1958 law requires that pigs, cows and a list of other animals be free from neglect, abuse and pain as they make their wa...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the Environmental Protection Agency is looking to make peace on biofuels standards with a group of senators from corn-growing states who could upend President Donald Trump's nominees for key regulatory posts. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt pledged in a letter to Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa and a half dozen other Republican lawmakers to take specific actions benefiting the biofuels industry. Last summer, Pruitt proposed biofuels targets for 2017 and 2018 set slightly below current levels. This followed a push by oil c...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The Trump administration's decision to kill a rule designed to protect the rights of farmers who raise chickens, cows and hogs for the United States' largest meat processors has infuriated farmer advocates, including a Republican senator from Iowa who said he has "violent opposition" to the move. The rule would have made it easier for farmers to sue companies they contract with over unfair, discriminatory or deceptive practices. Called the Farmer Fair Practice Rule, it was rolled out by the U.S. Department of Agriculture...
