Gazette Daily News Briefing, March 20 and March 21
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for the weekend of March 20th and 21st.
Happy Spring Equinox. We have a nice spring-like weekend to herald the first week of spring.
According to the National Weather Service Forecast we will have sunny skies in the Cedar Rapids area on Saturday with a high near 58 degrees. It will be a might bit windy, with wind speeds of 5 to 15 mph gusting as high as 20 mph. On Sunday it will be mostly sunny, with a high near 67, while still being breezy yet again. On Sunday night there will be a small chance for rain, which will transition into a higher chance for more rain on Monday.
After a year of bad news, for the second day in a row Friday, no COVID-19 outbreaks were reported Friday in any of Iowa’s 429 long-term care facilities.
An outbreak is defined as three of more COVID-19 cases among facility residents and staff. At the peak of the winter surge in virus cases, outbreaks were reported at 170 Iowa nursing homes on Dec. 3. In the past year, 2,224 residents of long-term care facilities have died, accounting for nearly 40 percent of the 5,672 virus-related deaths in Iowa.
Alliant Energy is “picking up the pace” on moving power lines in Iowa underground, Terry Kouba, the president of Alliant’s Iowa company told The Gazette this week. Kouba attributed the stepped-up effort on burying lines to increased reliability and decreased customer cost.
“Certainly when you get that system underground, it’s much more reliable when you have those windstorms, when you have those ice storms, when you have those tornadoes going through the state,” he said.
He acknowledged that last year’s derecho that devastated the state’s power lines almost as much as its trees has also served as a strong motivator, but the move underground has been happening for some time. Nobody tell the red-wing blackbirds they will have to find a new place to sit.
U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, voted against two bills that passed the House of Representatives on Thursday that would establish paths to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants, including “Dreamers” brought to the country as children and agricultural workers.
Noting a surge in migrants in February, Hinson faulted President Joe Biden’s executive orders, which that she said have “incentivized” illegal immigration.
Hinson said she supported some level of immigration protection for children brought to the country through no fault of their own, but said the legislation she voted against goes too far for her liking.
Nearly $775 million in federal relief soon will be available to Iowa schools to help cover costs incurred from the COVID-19 pandemic, officials in the Iowa Department of Education said Friday.
The money is Iowa’s share of the more than $122.7 billion in a third round of emergency relief provided in the American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, according to a news release. The money is part of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, signed into law March 11 by President Joe Biden.
The funding can be used for summer school and for other learning and enrichment programs to counter some of the learning lost when schools closed and switched to online instruction during the pandemic.
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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