Gazette Daily News Briefing, July 9 and July 10
Welcome to the weekend!
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for Saturday, July 9 and Sunday, July 10.
This weekend’s weather will be sunny and cool. According to the National Weather Service, on Saturday in the Cedar Rapids area it will be sunny with a high near 82 degrees and a low near 60 degrees. On Sunday the high will be close to 85 degrees, again with sunny skies, and the low will come in at 66 degrees.
The Vinton Public Library, which lost two directors in two years amid community complaints over books, is now closed indefinitely as the interim director has left, too.
The previous directors left after city residents complained about the library’s display of LGBTQ books and books about Democratic President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
The library board met Tuesday to accept the resignation of Colton Neely, the interim director. Neely, formerly the library’s children’s director, will become a museum curator in Burlington. His last day — and the library’s last day to stay open for now — was Friday.
Vinton, a town of about 5,000 and the county seat of Benton County, will now be without its library for at least the next week as the library board attempts to configure hours to work around an absence of directors. Board members told the Gazette that the hiring process for another director is in process.
A Missouri resident has been infected by a microscopic organism that causes a rare, life-threatening brain infection after swimming in late June at Lake of Three Fires State Park in Southwest Iowa.
The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services has closed the Taylor County lake to swimming as officials test for Naegleria fowleri, a single-cell, parasitic amoeba that can cause primary amebic meningoencephalitis.
The brain infection is rare — with only 154 known cases in the United States since 1962 — but it’s nearly always fatal.
Lake of Three Fires, about 25 miles east of Clarinda, is an 85-acre lake popular with boaters and anglers, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources reports. The state park was dedicated in 1935 and is named after a group of Native Americans from the Potawatomi tribe, known as the “Fire Nation,” who once inhabited the area.
The lake has frequently been closed to swimming in past summers because of harmful algae that create toxic microcystins that can sicken swimmers. Algae are fed by phosphorus that washes from farm fields into streams and lakes.
The Big Ten Conference is “not seeking applications” for any new members after its blockbuster additions of USC and UCLA, Iowa athletics director Gary Barta said in a Friday news conference.
“I don’t have a crystal ball, but at this point, I can tell you the Big Ten is still not seeking members,” Barta said. “I know the Big Ten is taking calls. … I'm not predicting that we would be adding any more in the near future.”
Barta declined to say whether he’d support the addition of more schools from the west coast such as Oregon or Washington to the Big Ten. He did say he would likely support membership for Notre Dame, if the Big Ten finally managed to seduce them into the conference after years of pining.
Barta said the primary concern now is solving logistical problems, such as travel challenges not just for football, but for nonrevenue sports as well.
