The senior guard averaged nearly 23 points, 10 rebounds, five assists and four steals in three games. Alexander poured in 32 points and added ten rebounds in a win over Twin Cedars and also posted a double-double in a loss to Davis County. He finished the game with 19 points and 12 rebounds.
Class 1A: Austin Halls, Murray
January 19, 2010 By
The freshman guard averaged 25 points, eight rebounds, seven assists and seven steals in three victories. Halls had a triple-double in a victory over Moravia with 29 points, 12 rebounds and ten assists. He also had eight steals and blocked four shots.
Hawkeye man charged with attempting to kill his wife
January 19, 2010 By
Kenny Becker Sr.
A rural Hawkeye woman is in the hospital and her husband is in jail charged with attempted murder for allegedly shooting her with a shotgun. Shortly after 11 p.m. Monday, the Fayette County Sheriff received a 9-1-1 call from a woman who said she had been shot by her husband.
Deputies found Gloria Becker in her vehicle at the intersection of two county roads, just north of Hawkeye, with a shotgun wound to her back and arm. An investigation revealed that her husband, 61-year-old Kenny Becker Senior, took a 12 gauge shotgun loaded with buckshot and shot his wife when she tried to leave their home.
Becker then barricaded himself in the home. Following a six-hour standoff with the Fayette County Sheriff and Iowa State Patrol Tactical Team, officers entered the home and took Becker into custody without further incident. He is charged with Attempted Murder.
Gloria Beck was initially taken to the West Union Hospital, then transferred to a Lacrosse, Wisconsin hospital with life-threatening injuries. The sheriff’s office seized 50 firearms and ammunition from Becker’s home. The incident remains under investigation.
By Roger King, KOEL, Oelwein
Branstad officially launches “comeback”
January 19, 2010 By
Terry Branstad talks with a supporter as he launches his campaign.
Former Governor Terry Branstad used the word “comeback” more than a dozen times as he formally kicked off his fifth campaign for governor this morning in Des Moines.
“You know, I’d like to start today with one simple question: Are you ready for a comeback?” Branstad said. “Perhaps even more important question: Is Iowa ready for a comeback.”
Fog continues to cause problems across the state
January 19, 2010 By
Motorists are urged to drive with extreme caution as the entire state is again under a dense fog advisory, with eight counties in southwest Iowa facing freezing fog. Visibility is drastically reduced, especially in low-lying areas. National Weather Service meteorologist Mindy Beerends says it’s the third day in a row of the thick fog.
The fog will continue at least through the morning and may lift a little in the afternoon, but she says a storm system will approach later in the day. Beerends expects that storm to start producing precipitation over much of Iowa late tonight and into Wednesday morning.
She say we’re expecting mainly freezing rain and there could be ice accumulations of three-tenths of an inch or so.
A Winter Storm Watch will take effect tonight, running through tomorrow afternoon, or later in some areas. Beerends says there may be a brief break from wintry weather later this week — until another storm system makes its way towards Iowa for the weekend. She says the precip will likely continue into Thursday morning and may mix with sleet, tapering off by Thursday night.
There may be a respite on Friday with a new storm front arriving on Saturday, but if it stays warm enough, that next system may only bring rain into Saturday night. For more details, see “www.weather.gov”.
By Pat Powers, KQWC, Webster City
Bugs turn up in medical software
January 19, 2010 By
Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley says some hospitals across the country are seeing bugs in new software that was designed to streamline the process — but it may actually be endangering patients. Grassley says 19-billion taxpayer dollars were used to encourage development and to implement HIT — Health Information Technology — and it evidently needs some tweaking.
“Over the last few months, concerns have been brought to my attention including administrative complications, formatting and usability issues, errors in interoperability,” Grassley says. “Some health care providers have said the software is producing incorrect medication dosages because it miscalculated body weights by interchanging kilograms and pounds.”
Grassley is sending letters to officials with 32 hospitals nationwide, quizzing them on the problems they’re experiencing with HIT. None of the 32 are located in Iowa.
Iowans create documentary about music sampling
January 19, 2010 By
A documentary created by two Iowans about music sampling will air this week on P.B.S. TV stations nationwide. “Copyright Criminals” is part of the “Independent Lens” series, and will debut tonight. Kembrew McLeod , the documentary’s executive producer and writer, says the technique of music sampling has been evolving for decades — even centuries.
“Musical borrowing has been around forever,” McLeod says. “It’s been a deep part of folk music, jazz music, blues. All these artists have always borrowed from each other. Digital sampling, aided by technology, didn’t really come around until the mid to late 80s. These technologies were used by hip-hop artists.” The documentary examines the creative and commercial value of music sampling, including the ongoing debates about artistic expression, copyright law and money.
“At the time, the music industry just thought they were a passing fad and they were, more or less, left alone to do whatever they wanted,” McLeod says. “They ended up making, in the late 80s, during the golden age of sampling, a lot of really interesting sound collages. But then the lawyers came along around 1990-91 and the lawsuits started flying and things changed very quickly.” The film showcases many of hip-hop’s founding figures like Public Enemy, De La Soul and Digital Underground.
McLeod says sampling was stifled by the law only temporarily and in the past two decades, has grown exponentially along with emerging technology. McLeod says an eastern Iowa native is riding a new wave of popularity with his sampling. “The #1 video this month on YouTube is by a young man named DJ Earworm,” McLeod says. “What he did was, over the course of five minutes, he mashed up the top 25 Billboard singles of 2009 and re-combined bits and pieces of them into a flowing five-minute conversation.”
The video has been viewed nearly seven-million times. McLeod says DJ Earworm is based in San Francisco and grew up in Iowa City. He’s touring the country, performing his music mixes. So if the sampling of someone else’s music is illegal, why is it so prolific? McLeod says: “You know that carnival game Whack-A-Mole where you try and whack down the moles and more pop up? It’s kind of like the digital version of Whack-A-Mole. There’s just no way they can police all the different people, whether it’s DJ Earworm from Iowa, or a 13-year-old or whoever, there’s just no way they can keep these supposed infringements down.”
McLeod is a professor of communication studies at the University of Iowa. His partner on the project is Benjamin Franzen, who directed, produced and edited the documentary. Franzen, a Dubuque native, is a University of Iowa graduate, now based in Atlanta. While the documentary will debut Tuesday night on P-B-S stations nationwide, it will *not* air on Iowa Public TV until Sunday, January 24th.
Here is the video: DJ Earworm’s Pop 2009 Mashup
