Gazette Daily News Briefing, July 17 and July 18
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for Saturday, July 17 and Sunday, July 18.
Whether you are going to Latino Fest in Iowa City, the Bluegrass Festival in Kalona, or Solon Beef Days this weekend, the weather should be about as nice for getting out to do things we have seen in awhile. According to the National Weather Service Saturday should be sunny, with a high near 83 degrees. A northeast wind will blow at around 5 mph. Sunday it should also be sunny, with calm winds and a high of 86 degrees.
In her opening statement as the Drew Blahnik murder trial began Friday, Assistant Linn County Attorney Jennifer Erger told a jury that a missing person case became a homicide case after Chris Bagley was killed in December 2018.
Erger told the jury that an autopsy revealed that Bagley had been stabbed 17 times. Blahnik is accused of stabbing Bagley to death as he was held by another man because Bagley had stolen money and drugs from a local drug dealer. Drew Wagner, the man who was holding Bagley according to the prosecution, has already pleaded to a lesser crime and is cooperating against Blahnik. For his part, Blahnik admitted to the stabbing, but said it was done in self defense.
The trial is expected to continue next week.
A man died Friday evening in the Cedar River, where he had been swimming.
Cedar Rapids firefighters were called to the river shortly before 5:30 p.m. near First Street and O Avenue NW.
Witnesses told firefighters a man had entered the water to swim and had begun to struggle, “then went under the water and did not resurface.”
Firefighters launched three boats and, after 30 minutes of searching, found the man’s body in approximately 10 feet of water, 15 feet from the shore, the news release stated.
After nearly four years fighting certain religious student organizations on its campus over who can and can’t be leaders, the University of Iowa on Friday lost again in federal court — with a panel of U.S. appellate judges blasting the institution for clear viewpoint discrimination.
“What the university did here was clearly unconstitutional,” according to a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. “It targeted religious groups for differential treatment under the human rights policy — while carving out exemptions and ignoring other violative groups with missions they presumably supported.”
The InterVarsity Graduate Christian Fellowship — at the center of Friday’s opinion — sued the UI in 2018 on the heels of an earlier lawsuit from another UI student organization named Business Leaders in Christ, or BLinC.
That first lawsuit stemmed from the university’s decision in 2017 to deregister BLinC for barring an openly gay member from becoming a leader because he refused to affirm the group’s belief that same-sex relationships are against the Bible.
BLinC in its lawsuit accused the university of selectively applying its human rights policy, pointing out many other UI groups — including Muslim groups, ethnic groups, political groups, fraternities and sororities — restrict leadership and membership based on gender, ethnicity or ideology.
Be sure to subscribe to The Gazette Daily news podcast, or just tell your Amazon Alexa enabled device to “enable The Gazette Daily News skill" so you can get your daily briefing by simply saying “Alexa, what’s the news?
If you prefer podcasts, you can also find us on iTunes or wherever else you find your Podcasts.
