Gazette Daily News Briefing, March 31
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette Digital News Desk, and I’m here with your update for Friday, March 31.
We're going to have a little bit of everything in the next 24 hours, including the potential for one of our first serious storms of the year. According to the National Weather Service there will be showers and thunderstorms in the Cedar Rapids area, primarily after 2 p.m. The high will be 73 degrees. The current projections from NWS has the majority of the rain falling between 3 and 5 p.m. Wind gusts Friday night could pick up to as much as 45 mph.
The NWS weather service also cautions that the storms will be fast moving, with some moving as fast as 60 mph.
Then, early Saturday morning, we could see a chance for snow, with a high of 30 degrees. It is then predicted to bounce back to a high of 66 degrees by Sunday.
Donald Trump has been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury, prosecutors and defense lawyers said Thursday, making him the first former U.S. president to face a criminal charge and jolting his bid to retake the White House next year.
According to reporting from the Associated Press, the charges remained under seal late Thursday, but the investigation centered on payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign to silence claims of an extramarital sexual encounter. Prosecutors said they were working to coordinate Trump’s surrender, which could happen early next week
Iowa Republicans were critical of the indictment, accusing the New York District Attorney of playing politics with the decision to indict, and accusing the prosecutors of not doing enough to stop rising crime in that city instead.
Days after Utah became the first state to enact laws limiting how children can use social media, Iowa Republican House lawmakers said they plan to pursue a similar measure that would require parental consent before children under the age of 18 can sign up to use sites like TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook.
House File 526, as introduced by Rep. Henry Stone, a Republican from Forest City, would ban anyone under the age of 18 from having their own social media account. Social media companies that operate in the state would be fined $1,000 per violation, and the proposal directs the Iowa Attorney General’s Office to enforce provisions of the bill.
While the bill proposes an all-out ban of children on social media, Republicans who advanced it in a subcommittee meeting Thursday said they would amend it to give kids access to social media if their parents allow it.
The Iowa Department of Natural Resources has ordered a Coggon landowner to pay more than $20,000 after an investigation showed fertilizer pumped from the property killed more than 50,000 fish in Dry Creek last fall.
Patrick and Tracy Hammes, who live in Batavia but own a fertilizer storage site near Coggon, must pay a $10,000 administrative penalty — the largest fine the DNR can assess — and $11,400 in restitution and investigative costs, according to the order released Thursday.
Investigators believe the fish kill was caused by leaks in ammonia nitrogen storage tanks on the Hammes property. A review by DNR Biologist Dan Kirby estimated there were more than 50,000 dead fish as a result, including minnows, chubs, dace, suckers, stonerollers, darters and sunfish.
