Gazette Daily News Briefing, April 24 and April 25
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for Saturday, April 24 and Sunday, April 25.
I feel the need to start the weather off by informing you it is going to randomly jump up to a high temperature of nearly 80 degrees Monday and Tuesday. I mention this both because the weekend’s weather will not be as interesting, and because that is roughly a 40 degree jump from some of the highs this past week.
I don’t mean to undersell this weekend’s weather, though. Besides some frost in the mornings it should be rather pleasant. According to the National Weather Service there will be a high near 60 degrees in the Cedar Rapids area Saturday with partly sunny skies. Sunday will feature very similar weather, with partly sunny skies predicted and a very low chance for precipitation.
It is an event that was made to be announced on the radio: Toby Keith is coming to the Xtream Arena.
The Xtream Arena in Coralville announced Friday that the country music star will be the venue’s first concert. Keith will headline the arena on Oct. 14 with guest Matt Stell.
The roughly $70 million arena and sports complex opened in September 2020 and has hosted sporting events and soon will be home to a USHL hockey team, but this marks the first music event for the venue. The arena has a capacity of 6,600 for concerts.
Federal health officials lifted a temporary pause Friday night on the use of the one-dose Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine after a safety review by the CDC and the FDA.
The agencies had paused use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine last week because of reports of six cases of blood clots among the millions of people who had received the vaccine. The announcement Friday evening followed a meeting of an independent advisory panel to the CDC that recommended the inoculations with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine resume. The panel said the benefits outweigh the risks even as it was briefed about an additional small group of recipients who had developed blood clots.
Rob Sand, the Democratic Iowa state auditor, said Friday he is considering three options for next year’s elections: run for re-election as auditor, run for governor or run for the U.S. Senate.
Followers of Iowa politics have suspected Sand, a former staffer in the Iowa Attorney General’s Office who was elected state auditor in 2018, was likely to run for governor or the U.S. Senate seat in 2022. Sand confirmed that speculation Friday during taping of this weekend’s episode of “Iowa Press” on Iowa PBS.
In local politics, the vacancy on the Johnson County Board of Supervisors will be filled by special election. Johnson County voters will go to the polls June 8 to fill the seat of former Supervisor Janelle Rettig, who resigned last weekend.
The decision to hold a special election was made Friday by a committee consisting of County Auditor Travis Weipert, County Recorder Kim Painter and County Treasurer Tom Kriz.
This briefing is sponsored in part by Corridor Careers. Are you looking for a job? CorridorCareers.com is a resource to local job seekers where they can get job tips, sign up for local job alerts, build a resume and more. Check it out at CorridorCareers.com.
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