Iowa's Radio News Network
The senior pitcher finished the week with a record of 4-1 and in 34 innings of work gave up only one earned run, eight hits and struck out 62 batters. Lacy fired a complete game one-hitter with 16 strikeouts in a victory over Marion and tossed a no-hitter with 13 strikeouts in a victory over Mount Vernon.
The junior shortstop batted .563 and in four games had nine hits and scored seven runs. In a doubleheader sweep of Mason City Garrett was six-of-eight at the plate with a homer, a double and scored six runs.
An eastern Iowa man is leaving for Iraq today, but Nathan Timmel isn’t a soldier.
He’s a comedian. Timmel will spend 10 days with several other stand-up comics performing for the troops.
The North Libery resident made a similar trip five years ago. He also visited Afghanistan.
“The decision to go back is probably one of the easier decisions I’ve ever had to make in my life,” Timmel said. “I’ve been trying to go back for years.” But, Timmel said he was waiting for the right talent agency to book the tour. It’ll be a grueling trip involving several shows a day, but Timmel says it’s his way of saying “thanks” to the men and women in uniform.
“If I can go over there and use whatever skills I have, do the job that I do and meet them in the area where they work, it’s the least I can do,” Timmel said. “It’s something I can do to distract them from their daily routine.”
The Wisconsin native said one of the highlights of the 2004 trip was a soldier that told him after a show that she had temporarily forgotten she was in a war-torn country. Timmel says that’s the reason he wanted to go back.
“It has nothing to do with right-wing, left-wing, being for the war or against the war…people signed up for the military and whether or not you support (the war), they’re still our countrymen,” Timmel said. Aside from the trip to Iraq, this is a big year for Timmel. He’ll be getting married later this summer and turns 40 in November.
University of Iowa researchers have landed a $3.6 million federal grant to study glaucoma, a disease that can permanently rob people of their vision. Dr. John Fingert, an ophthalmology professor at the U-of-I, is the study’s principal investigator.
"In America, it’s the second most common cause of blindness," Fingert says. "It’s the leading cause of blindness among African Americans. It’s also a common cause of vision disability. Many people aren’t considered blind but have lost significant vision." Glaucoma targets the optic nerve, which connects the eye to the brain.
Fingert says the team will be working to identify how the disease is passed from parent to child. "We’re interested in identifying genetic risk factors for glaucoma," Fingert says. "We’re looking for the genes that may predispose some people to be at higher risk for getting this vision problem than others."
While researchers can measure signs of glaucoma, like damage to the optic nerve and vision loss, he says the events that lead to glaucoma aren’t yet well known. That’s hindering efforts for early detection and treatment. Part of the research will involve people who took part in a large glaucoma treatment trial, called the Ocular Hypertension Treatment Study. He says another part will involve mice.
Fingert says, "One of my close collaborators, Dr. Michael Anderson, is a professor in physiology and he’s an expert in mouse genetics and he’s going to be doing parallel experiments using studies of inbred mice." This project also will involve U-of-I researchers in molecular physiology, biophysics, statistics and actuarial sciences, biostatics and biomedical engineering.
The five-year grant for the U-of-I research is from the National Institutes of Health.
The 24-year-old Parkersburg man accused of killing his high school football coach will stand trial in mid-September.
Mark Becker is accused of first degree murder for the shooting death of Aplington-Parkersburg coach Ed Thomas. A district court judge has set Tuesday, September 15th as the opening day of Becker’s trial on the murder charge.
Becker is pleading not guilty. A public defender has been assigned to serve as his attorney.
Becker is also accused of eluding law enforcement and other charges stemming from a crime spree that happened the weekend before witnesses say Becker shot his former coach. The trial on those other charges is scheduled to start on October 27th.
District Court Judge Steven Carroll filed paperwork this morning in Butler County District Court in Allison to set the dates for the two trials. Becker entered written pleas of not guilty last week. He’s being held in the Cerro Gordo County Jail in Mason City.
Congressman Dave Loebsack has just returned from a trip to Afghanistan where he meet with Iowa troops as well as top U.S. military leaders in the region.
"I talked to a number of our troops, a number of commanders, our ambassador, our general in charge. I talked to President Karzi and a number of Afghans," Loebsack says.
"I think what I found was that people who are prosecuting the war at this point are pleased that the Obama Administration has a recommitment to the effort. That’s something that of course I argued for before the Obama Administration came into office. President Obama argued for that and now he’s trying to put that into effect."
Loebsack, a Democrat from Mount Vernon, was first elected to congress in 2006, partially on a tide of voter angst about the war in Iraq. Now, some Democrats have begun calling for a date of withdrawal from Afghanistan. Loebsack, meanwhile, says both he and Obama were clear with voters during the 2008 campaign about the need for a refocused effort in Afghanistan.
"We are all concerned about making sure we do not get bogged down in Afghanistan as so many great powers have in the past," Loebsack says. "Since I’ve been a member of congress, it’s been a great concern of mine. I’m also, obviously, doing all I can to hold the Obama Administration as accountable as I did the Bush Administration."
Loebsack’s Afghanistan trip comes just a few weeks before important elections in Afghanistan. Loebsack met with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzi. Loebsack also had dinner with four of the leading candidates who are running against him in the August 20th voting. Loebsack isn’t choosing sides in the election.
"It’s not my position to get into the middle of that," Loebsack says. "…To me and I think to those of us who are making policy here at the national level, what we need is a transparent process in Afghanistan, one that’s accountable, and whatever the process is, we have to make sure that it’s legitimate and that whoever the next president is is considered legitimate. This is a critical election. There’s no doubt about it."
Loebsack says the role of the U.S. is to provide security so Afghanistan’s citizens can vote freely next month.
Loebsack, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, led a bipartisan delegation of Midwestern House members who traveled to Afghanistan on July 27th and returned on July 3rd. Loebsack, therefore, was in Afghanistan when the recent offensive against the Taliban began.
"It began in the south and in the east to some extent. We were not on the ground, obviously, when that was happening although we were in a host province in the eastern part of the country when the assault began and we had to divert our travels in the Blackhawk (helicopter). We had to go a little further north than we thought we were going to have to, to go to Kabul," Loebsack says. "But we were not in any imminent danger."
Loebsack visited with some Iowa National Guard soldiers who’re in Afghanistan and delivered care packages from charitable groups in Cedar Rapids. The Marine Corps League had members of the Cedar Rapids Kernels baseball team sign baseballs which Loebsack gave to the Iowa soldiers, too.
Lightening is believed to be the cause of a fire this morning at a business in Mills County that refurbishes semi tractor-trailers. Pacific Junction and Glenwood firefighters were called to the fire Vehicare in Pacific Junction off Insterstate-29.
Glenwood fire chief Butch Fidler says an employee reported what’s believed to be lightening strike around 7 a.m. Fidler says the employee was outside the compound waiting to get in when the sky lit up and there was a loud bang. He says there was no apparent damage to the employee’s vehicle, but one quarter of a mile in, there was a rolling fire in a group of semis.
Fidler says the fire caused a lot of damage. He says there was a semi that appeared to be struck by lightening, and about seven to eight trailers that were totaled. Fidler says there were trucks across the aisle that had plastic melted off of them from the intense heat of the fire. Fidler says there were no injuries in the fire.
O.KayHenderson.com