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Health Department says mumps cases not slowing down

May 3, 2006 By

Officials at the Iowa Department of Public Health dispute published reports that say the state’s mumps epidemic is on the decline. The latest count is 14-hundred-87 mumps cases this year in 74 of Iowa’s 99 counties.

State Health Department spokesman Kevin Teale says a recent report claimed the rate of new cases was falling, but he says that’s not right. He says there’s no slowdown in the epidemic, with a continued rate of 30 to 50 new cases reported every day.

Teale says more than half of the patients thought they were protected. He says in those cases where follow-up investigations were conducted, just over 54-percent said they’d had two of the mumps vaccines.

Teale says that doesn’t mean the vaccine doesn’t work, but it’s only effective 90-to-95 percent of the time, so even people who’ve had the shot can still get mumps. He says that percentage is “on par” with an outbreak this large.

Most cases are being reported in Iowans between 17 and 24. Dubuque County continues to lead the state with 430 mumps cases reported, followed by Black Hawk County with 200 cases and Johnson County with 183.

Filed Under: Health & Medicine

Lawyer for Colo teen wants insanity defense

May 3, 2006 By

Information is now out on how the lawyer will handle the case of a teenage girl from the central Iowa town of Colo who is charged with shooting a man.

The attorney for 18-year-old Rachel Huggins has filed a motion of “defense of insanity and diminished responsibility” as well as a request for a change of venue. Huggins is accused of shooting a prison guard on New Year’s Eve after she had accused her alleged victim of sexually abusing her.

Huggins is expected to have her pre-trial conference on July 17th with a potential trial to follow on the charge of attempted murder and willful injury causing serious injury.

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

Boswell holds hearing on missing luggage

May 3, 2006 By

Iowa Congressman Leonard Boswell asked for some answers today from the people who lose your luggage. Iowa’s only Democratic Congressman, Boswell is a member of the House Aviation Subcommittee. Boswell says in 2005, some 30-Million bags were lost or stolen, and 200-thousand were never reunited with their owners. He says it’s happened to him, and a lot of people he’s talked to, but the hearing today (Wednesday) wasn’t to accuse but to see what can be done to improve the situation.

The subcommittee hears from representatives of the federal Department of Transportation, the Transportation Security Administration, and the airlines themselves. Boswell called it a “good discussion,” and said the participants agreed to take some steps to improve their handling of travelers’ possessions.

He says they’re going to pay better attention to staffing levels, especially going into the peak travel time of the summer months. The TSA’s promised to report back to the subcommittee on its probe of employee theft and what it’s doing to install better monitoring devices.

The D-O-T’s also agreed to refine the reporting process for consumers who’ve lost their baggage. Boswell says his staff’s putting a link on h is website for travelers who’ve lost luggage, offering tips on what they can do about it.

Related web sites:
Leonard Boswell’s website

Filed Under: Politics & Government Tagged With: , ,

TouchPlay shut down draws some to try the machines

May 3, 2006 By

Iowa Lottery spokeswoman Tina Pothoff says the shutdown of the TouchPlay machines has apparently spurred some people to get out and play the machines before the deadline tonight.

A 60-something man who asked not to be identified tried his luck on a TouchPlay machine for the first time today at a Des Moines convenience store. He won 26 dollars and says that’s pretty good for a one dollar investment. The man says there should be a place for the machines, but he agrees with the critics that don’t want them readily accessible to the public.

He says if they were in lounges were kids weren’t around he’d have no problem with that, but he says it’s different when the machines are in stores. Critics say the machines look and sound too much like slot machines and spread gambling to widely across the state.

Filed Under: Recreation & Entertainment Tagged With:

TouchPlay shutdown underway as owners hope for reprieve

May 3, 2006 By

The Iowa Lottery says the process is underway to shut down the 64-hundred TouchPlay machines in the state, while owners seek a last minute reprieve. Iowa Lottery spokeswoman Tina Potthoff says the four companies that own the TouchPlay machines began a process this morning that would shut down the machines. She says each of the companies have a central operating system that will send out a message to the machines to make them inoperable.

Pothoff says the shutdown will likely take all day — but will be completed by the Legislature’s deadline of 11:59 tonight. Pothoff says there’s some worry that a machine could shut down while someone is playing the machine, and that player would lose their money. She says they don’t think that will happen. She says the machine should cash the player out at the time it shuts down.

While the shutdown process is underway — the lawyers for three of the TouchPlay machine companies filed a motion today to ask a judge to reconsider his decision against their request for an injunction to stop the shutdown.

Craig Cohoon, the vice president of sales for Moss Distributing, says they’d like to see the shutdown deadline extended so they could get back more of the money they invested in the machines. Cohoon says they’re hopeful and he says there are some people that want to help them out and keep companies from going into bankruptcy. The Iowa House had approved a bill that would keep the TouchPlay machines running until September, but the Senate refused to act on the bill.

If the situation doesn’t change — Pothoff of the Iowa Lottery says the next deadline is for players to cash in their prizes. Pothoff says all prizes under 600 dollars must be claimed Thursday. Prizes over 600 dollars can be claimed at an Iowa Lottery office up until August 29th.

What happens to all the idle TouchPlay machines? Pothoff says they go back to the companies that own them. Pothoff says the Iowa Lottery is under the belief that the owner-operators should take care of the machines, although she says they’ve heard that some may be in financial trouble and unable to pick up the machines. Pothoff says the machines are spread out in some three-thousand businesses across the state.

Filed Under: Business, Recreation & Entertainment Tagged With: ,

Energy company to burn waste gas in Waterloo

May 3, 2006 By

An energy company wants to convert gases from a northeast Iowa sewage lagoon into power. Planergy Capital of Minnesota wants to capture gases produced by waste from two Waterloo factories and convert those gases into electricity.

Those gases — emitting from a sewage lagoon used by Eagle Ottawa Tannery and the Tyson Foods pork processing plant — are now burned off with a large torch that runs continuously.

Under a four-year agreement finalized this week, Planergy would pay the city of Waterloo 10-thousand dollars per month for use of the treatment lagoon. In exchange, the city would provide the land for the energy company to set up equipment that would turn the gas into electricity.

Under terms of the deal, the city would also receive 60-cents for each million unit of methane that’s produced by the lagoon. If all goes as planned, Planergy will begins operations in Waterloo early next year.

Filed Under: Business Tagged With:

Motorcyclist dies in Des Moines crash

May 3, 2006 By

Des Moines police are investigating a fatal motorcycle crash early this (Wednesday) morning. Sergeant Todd Dykstra says an officer saw the speeding cycle about 2:15 heading the other way on a main street near downtown and turned his squad car around to pursue it.

Dykstra says “It wasn’t a police chase” and the officer didn’t even turn on his siren or lights. Before he was able to catch up to the bike, the officer saw sparks and then found the wrecked motorcycle — which had hit a bridge over the Raccoon River.

After the cycle hit the bridge, the driver was ejected over the side of the bridge. The body was found some 300-feet from the wreckage, on land. The man’s identified as 21-year-old Christopher Holsinger of Des Moines.

Filed Under: Fires/Accidents/Disasters
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