Gazette Daily News Briefing, January 7
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for Friday, January 7.
Friday will be the last day of the recent cold snap as temperatures will climb from sub zero to near freezing over the weekend. According to a forecast from the National Weather Service it will be mostly sunny in the Cedar Rapids area with a high near 7 degrees. Wind chill values will still remain as low as -25 degrees. Friday night will already show a hint of the warming, with the temperature rising to 11 degrees.
President Joe Biden on Thursday forcefully condemned what he called Donald Trump’s election “big lie” that sparked the deadly breach of the Capitol by his supporters a year ago and continues to motivate deep national division. He marked the anniversary of the insurrection by declaring he will stand and fight for “the soul of America.”
“For the first time in our history, a president not just lost an election, he tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob breached the Capitol,” Biden said. “But they failed.”
Trump and his allies to this day contest the legitimacy of his election loss, a fact that is not lost on either party as we head into an important midterm election year. On an unusual anniversary in Washington, both parties responded with typical division.
A driver hit two semis and two passenger vehicles while going northbound on southbound Interstate 380 Thursday, stopping traffic near the 42 Street NE exit while Cedar Rapids firefighters extricated people from three vehicles.
According to a Cedar Rapids police spokesman, after hitting the four vehicles, the driver stopped near 42nd Street, got out of his car, stripped all of his clothes off and ran from the scene in near zero degree weather. He was apprehended and taken to a hospital for evaluation.
No charges have been filed pending testing and interviews, the spokesman said. There were no life-threatening injuries from the incident, although police and firefighters spent more than two hours on the scene extracting three people from the vehicles involved.
A trial for an Iowa City man, accused of killing his wife in 2019 because she was going to find out about his risky high-interest loans and falsified banking records, has been delayed for the sixth time, now to July 12.
Roy Carl Browning Jr., 69, charged with first-degree murder, was set to go to trial Feb. 1, but last month asked for another continuance because an “indispensable” prosecution and defense witness couldn’t be available to testify at the trial due to “medical circumstances.”
Leon Spies, Browning’s lawyer, said he had talked to Johnson County Attorney Janet Lyness, and she didn’t resist the continuance.
This trial has been reset five times since 2020 because of scheduling conflicts and the suspension of jury trials and limited jail visits during the early months of the pandemic.
Support for this news update was provided by New Pioneer Food Co-op. Celebrating 50 years as Eastern Iowa’s source for locally and responsibly sourced groceries with stores in Iowa City, Coralville and Cedar Rapids; you can also order online through Co-op Cart at New p-i dot c-o-o-p.
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Support for this podcast provided by New Pioneer Food Co-op. Celebrating 50 years as Eastern Iowa’s source for locally and responsibly sourced groceries with stores in Iowa City, Coralville and Cedar Rapids; and online through Co-op Cart at newpi.coop.
