Cedar Rapids, Linn County | featured news

Forty years after its 1981 founding, Riverside Theatre is entering a new stage that promises to bring new life and new avenues for adventures in Iowa City’s Pedestrian Mall district.

When the 18th Amendment outlawing the manufacture and sale of liquor was added to the U.S. Constitution in 1920, it provided a lucrative challenge organized crime couldn’t pass up. As crime and violence increased nationwide, so did the number of bootleggers in Iowa.

DES MOINES — Gov. Kim Reynolds’ proposal to create scholarships for private school tuition would cost the state’s 300-plus public school districts $2.1 million, a fraction of the more than $3 billion the state devotes each year to K-12 public education, according to a nonpartisan state analysis.

Iowa reported 306 new COVID-19 cases Monday and five confirmed deaths between 11 a.m. Sunday and 11 a.m. Monday, according to data from the Iowa Department of Public Health. Since the virus first appeared in Iowa in early March, 319,506 individuals have tested positive for COVID-19 and 4,906 people have died.

A Democratic-led House panel is launching a probe into coronavirus outbreaks at meatpacking plants and whether the Occupational Safety and Health Administration adequately enforced worker safety rules.

CEDAR RAPIDS — A 38-year-old man is accused of assaulting a woman and forcing her to engage in a sex act at a northeast Cedar Rapids residence.Jovan M. Walton, of Cedar Rapids, faces charges of second-degree sexual abuse and assault causing bodily injury, according to the criminal complaint.

IOWA CITY — University of Iowa Health Care on Monday morning officially began collecting names of community members wanting a COVID-19 vaccine — propelling the hospital system into its next vaccination phase after the campus, following state guid

Three cases of a new, more-contagious variant of COVID-19 have been confirmed in Iowa, with two of those cases in Johnson County, the Iowa Department of Public Health confirmed.

“We actually started this business in a dorm room,” Robert Miley Jr. recalled one morning this past week. “Our goal is to inspire. There’s not a lot of people that look like me and look like Juan who start a video production business in Iowa.”

This article is the first in an occasional series called “In Focus” about public access to police body camera and in-car camera video in Iowa.