Sorted by date Results 1 - 22 of 22
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — For the first time since 1938, children in Des Moines, Iowa, will go trick-or-treating on Halloween. Going door-to-door for candy on All Hallows' Eve has long been commonplace throughout the country. But not in Des Moines, where Iowa's capital city took a different approach more than seven decades ago in hopes of tamping down on hooliganism. Instead, Des Moines children don their costumes on Beggars' Night, typically the day before Halloween. And besides screaming, "Trick-or-Treat," children are expected to tell a joke b...
WYOMING, Iowa (AP) — Taking a late-summer country drive in the Midwest means venturing into the corn zone, snaking between 12-foot-tall green, leafy walls that seem to block out nearly everything other than the sun and an occasional water tower. The skyscraper-like corn is a part of rural America as much as cavernous red barns and placid cows. But soon, that towering corn might become a miniature of its former self, replaced by stalks only half as tall as the green giants that have dominated fields for so long. "As you drive across the M...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The federal government has long had sole authority over immigration policy in the United States, but several Republican-led states have continued to push for a role in enforcing regulations out of frustration with current policy and as a way to criticize Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden. With polling showing Americans are increasingly worried about illegal immigration, the concern has become a top issue in the presidential campaign between Biden and Republican Donald Trump. Republican officials in several states s...
Powerball will match a record for lottery drawings Saturday night with a stretch of more than three months without a jackpot winner. It's that string of futility that has enabled Powerball's top prize to reach $1.23 billion, the 8th largest in U.S. lottery history. And it's a sign that the game is operating exactly as designed, with long odds creating a massive jackpot that entices people to drop $2 on a ticket. It means no one should ever expect to match all six numbers and hit it rich, though it's likely someone eventually will. ABOUT THOSE...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Two juveniles were charged with crimes connected to the mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs' Super Bowl rally, authorities said Friday, as the city tries to recover in the aftermath of the violence. A news release from the Jackson County Family Court said the juveniles were charged Thursday and are being detained in the county's Juvenile Detention Center "on gun-related and resisting arrest charges." The release said it is "anticipated that additional charges are expected in the future as the investigation by the K...
Snowplows are essential to enduring winter in Minnesota, so maybe it's not surprising that every year thousands of people vote on names for the giant machines that clear the state's roads, such as Plowy McPlowFace and Darth Blader. The often-icy state began naming its 800 plows in 2020 and is expected to announce winners of its 2023-2024 Name a Snowplow contest early next week, adding eight selections to more than three dozen names that already grace trucks scraping snow off Minnesota highways. This year's 49 finalists — one name was d...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A sprawling storm hit the South with tornado warnings and high winds that blew roofs off homes, flipped over campers and tossed about furniture in Florida on Tuesday. Another storm brought cities across the Midwest to a standstill with more than half a foot of snow, stranding people on highways as it headed to the Northeast. At least two deaths in the South were attributed to the storm, where 55 mph (88 kph) winds and hail moved through the Florida Panhandle and into parts of Alabama and Georgia by sunrise Tuesday, a...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Five residents of a six-story apartment building that partially collapsed in eastern Iowa remained unaccounted for Tuesday, and authorities feared at least two of them might be stuck inside rubble that was too dangerous to search. The three other missing residents are not believed to have been in the building when it started collapsing Sunday afternoon, said state Rep. Monica Kurth. Mayor Mike Matson confirmed at a news conference that not all the residents were accounted for. A group of protesters held signs and c...
A Ponca tribe chief whose landmark lawsuit in 1879 established that a Native American is a person under the law was honored Friday with the unveiling of a U.S. Postal Service stamp that features his portrait. The release of the stamp of Chief Standing Bear comes 146 years after the Army forced him and about 700 other members of the Ponca tribe to leave their homeland in northeast Nebraska and walk 600 miles (965 kilometers) to the Indian Territory in Oklahoma. Chief Standing Bear was arrested and imprisoned in Fort Omaha when he and others...
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Someone who bought a Powerball ticket in Southern California has won a record $2.04 billion Powerball jackpot. The winning numbers drawn Tuesday morning at the Florida Lottery draw studio in Tallahassee were: white balls 10, 33, 41, 47 and 56, and the red Powerball was 10. The jackpot ticket was sold at Joe's Service Center in Altadena, northeast of Los Angeles. The business will receive a maximum Powerball bonus of $1 million. The Multi-State Lottery Association said Monday night's scheduled drawing was delayed by nearly 1...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Millions of lottery players around the country will try their luck again Monday night as they vie for an estimated $1.9 billion Powerball jackpot that dwarfs all previous prizes by hundreds of millions of dollars. The jackpot is nearly $400 million larger than the previous record jackpot and will keep growing until someone wins the prize. Only four previous jackpots have topped $1 billion, but none of those are close to the current prize, which started at $20 million back on Aug. 6 and over three winless months has g...
CHURDAN, Iowa (AP) — In the 1970s when George Naylor said he wanted to grow organic crops, the idea didn't go over well. Back then organic crops were an oddity, destined for health food stores or maybe a few farmers markets. "I told my dad I wanted to be an organic farmer and he goes, 'Ha, ha, ha,'" Naylor said, noting it wasn't until 2014 that he could embrace his dream and begin transitioning from standard to organic crops. But over the decades, something unexpected happened — demand for organics started increasing so fast that it began out...
DYERSVILLE, Iowa (AP) — Spurred by a voice telling him, "If you build it, he will come," the Iowa farmer played by Kevin Costner dutifully carved a baseball field out of his cornfield and then watched as Shoeless Joe Jackson and his Chicago White Sox teammates strode out of the stalks and onto the Field of Dreams. Major League Baseball is building another field a few hundred yards down a corn-lined path from the famous movie site in eastern Iowa but unlike the original, it's unclear whether teams will show up for a game this time as the l...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Even as most Americans are under orders from their governor to stay at home to slow the spread of the coronavirus, leaders in a handful of states have steadfastly refused to take that action, arguing it's unneeded and could be harmful. Nine governors have refused to issue statewide mandates that people stay at home, but local leaders have taken action in some of those states. North Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa and Arkansas are the only states where no one is under a stay-at-home order. The lack of action from those g...
LACONA, Iowa (AP) — When President Donald Trump levied tariffs on China that scrambled global markets, farmer Randy Miller was willing to absorb the financial hit. Even as the soybeans in his fields about an hour south of Des Moines became less valuable, Miller saw long-term promise in Trump's efforts to rebalance America's trade relationship with Beijing. "The farmer plays the long game," said Miller, who grows soybeans and corn and raises pigs in Lacona. "I look at my job through my son, my grandkids. So am I willing to suffer today to get t...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — U.S. Rep. Steve King on Wednesday defended his call for a ban on all abortions by questioning whether there would be "any population of the world left" if not for births due to rape and incest. Speaking before a conservative group in the Des Moines suburb of Urbandale, the Iowa congressman reviewed legislation he has sought that would outlaw abortions without exceptions for rape and incest. King justified the lack of exceptions by questioning how many people would be alive if not for those conceived through rapes and inc...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Between the country's trade dispute with China and the seemingly endless storms that have drenched the central U.S., Iowa farmer Robb Ewoldt has had plenty of time to think about whether it's too late to plant this season, how much federal aid he might get if he does or whether to skip it altogether and opt for an insurance payment. Instead of driving his tractor, he's driving a truck these days to earn a living while wondering how long it will be before he can return to his fields. "Sometimes I think, what the heck a...
GLENVILLE, Minn. (AP) — Wind turbines have become as commonplace in parts of the rural Midwest as tree-sheltered farmhouses, gray-metal grain bins and deeply furrowed fields. The slowly spinning blades are a sign of investment in a region that often has few growth opportunities to brag about. But when a developer sought to put up dozens more of the 400-foot towers in southern Minnesota, hundreds of people in the heart of wind country didn't celebrate. They fought back, going door-to-door to alert neighbors and circulating petitions to try to k...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Just after Thanksgiving Day in 1983, James Downey dropped off his older brother, John, at a Houston bus station, then quickly turned away so neither the police nor a motorcycle gang affiliated with his brother could later demand details about where the bus was headed. For 34 years, he didn't hear a word about him. Then this spring Downey received a heart-breaking call, one that more than 200 families across the country have gotten in the last few months since the FBI began using new fingerprint technology to resolve i...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa school for juvenile offenders subjects the boys to restraints and seclusion rooms and denies them essential mental health care, a federally funded nonprofit organization alleged Monday in a report that threatened legal action unless the state makes significant changes. Disability Rights Iowa concluded the Boys State Training School doesn't have enough mental health professionals, locks up children by themselves and restrains them in beds with full-body wraps. It made the assessment after 11 visits to the facility...
SCHALLER, Iowa (AP) — The small, family-owned Iowa trucking company linked to the deadly case of immigrant smuggling in Texas has a history of safety and tax violations and financial problems, public records show. Pyle Transportation Inc. failed to pay federal employment and trucking taxes for years, faced lawsuits from Iowa labor regulators over unpaid wages owed to drivers and has been ordered to pay major penalties for violations of federal safety rules, records show. The IRS and others who say the company owes them money have often found no...
STORM LAKE, Iowa (AP, Oct. 12, 2016) — Storm Lake, Iowa, appears the picture of economic health, a place where jobs are plentiful, the unemployment rate hovers near 3 percent, busy shops fill century-old brick buildings and children ride bikes on tree-lined sidewalks that end in the glare of its namesake lake. But there's a growing problem in the northwest Iowa city of 11,000, one that's familiar to rural areas around the country: Thousands of working families and elderly residents don't have enough money to feed themselves or their c...
