Gazette Daily News Briefing, February 18
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for Friday, February 18th.
According to the National Weather Service it should be mostly sunny with a high near 40 degrees in the Cedar Rapids area on Friday. The sunny weather should get tempered by a cold wind that will get stronger as the day goes on, reaching a wind chill of -10 degrees and wind gusts as high as 30 mph. There will be a slight chance of rain or snow Friday night, with the wind getting even stronger, and a low around 9 degrees.
Cedar Rapids-based broadband provider ImOn Communications said it has reached an agreement to be acquired by a division of Goldman Sachs Asset Management.
The acquisition, by Goldman Sachs’s infrastructure investing business, will support ImOn’s expansion of its high-speed fiber network in the surrounding markets, the provider announced Thursday.
More specifically ImOn, with the help of the funding, will complete its network build out to residences and businesses in the Cedar Rapids metropolitan area, Iowa City, Coralville and Dubuque in the next three years.
ImOn was founded in 2007 as a single-market cable provider. Today it owns and operates a more than 2,000 miles of network that reaches more than 60,000 households and businesses, it said.
A Cedar Rapids man was killed Wednesday morning when a semi-truck crossed the median on Interstate 80 and collided with the pickup he was driving, according to the Iowa State Patrol.
Driver Steven Michael Dolezal, 71, was killed when his Ford F-150 was struck around 9:20 a.m. Wednesday just 3 miles east of the Wilton/Muscatine exit on I-80. His passenger, Joan Kay Dolezal, 71, was injured and taken to a hospital in Davenport. Both were wearing seat belts, according to the crash report.
The driver of the semi, Mykhaylo Palamarchuk, 65, of Chicago, was also taken to the Davenport hospital with injuries. The semi-truck was traveling west on I-80 when it crossed over the cable barrier and median, striking the eastbound pickup head-on. The crash is being investigated by the Iowa State Patrol.
After four years of leading the University of Iowa’s $1.2 billion health care operation, Brooks Jackson, the UI vice president for medical affairs and dean of the nationally ranked UI Carver College of Medicine, is stepping down.
Jackson, 68, plans to remain on the UI faculty to pursue research, according to the UI Office of Strategic Communication. The university plans to immediately embark on a search for his successor, and Jackson will continue to serve until that person starts work, according to the UI.
As head of UIHC, Jackson led the largest multispecialty physician group practice in the state — a health care operation with a total impact of more than $4 billion on Iowa’s economy, employing more than 33,000 statewide.
The University of Iowa is also seeking to fill UIHC’s CEO position as multi million dollar expansion projects to the hospital are soon to be underway in Iowa City and North Liberty.
Support for this news update was provided by New Pioneer Food Co-op. Celebrating 50 years as Eastern Iowa’s destination for locally and responsibly sourced groceries with stores in Iowa City, Coralville and Cedar Rapids; and online through Co-op Cart at newpi.coop.
