Iowa's Radio News Network
Clay Anderson (far right) and the rest of the STS131 crew.
The only Iowa State University graduate to go into space is getting an opportunity for a repeat trip.
Astronaut Clay Anderson is assigned to the next space shuttle flight, as the shuttle Discovery heads to the International Space Station. Anderson will do several spacewalks on the mission, which is set to launch April 5th.
An 18-year-old Davenport man is going to prison for a fatal drive-by shooting. Guilty. That plea, in Scott County District Court, to charges of voluntary manslaughter, intimidation with a dangerous weapon and going armed with intent will send Rasheem Bogan to the slammer.
Bogan was 14 in 2006 when 19-year-old Vincelina Howard was killed in a drive-by shooting in Davenport. Cops say the shooting was in retaliation for another shooting and Howard was an unintended victim. Bogan is the second of four defendants to plead guilty to lesser charges. Appeals brought their cases back to court for retrial.
By Phil Roberts, Davenport
With the Missouri Valley Conference title in the bag the 24th ranked U.N.I. Panthers try to boost the national stature tonight when they host Old Dominion as part of the “Bracket Busters”, a series of games involving teams from mid-major conferences. Old Dominion is 21-7 overall and 13-3 in the Colonial Athletic Conference.
U.N.I. coach Ben Jacobson says they are an experienced team and a big team and he says there isn’t another national game on TV, so they’ll get a lot of exposure. Jacobsen says the Monarchs will provide a tough test. He says they beat Georgetown at Georgetown, a team that has been ranked all year. Jacobson says the Colonial Conference has five or six teams that are going to be in the NCAA tournament.
Senior guard Ali Farokhmanesh says the Panthers are excited about the chance to get national exposure. He says it will be a fun game and he hopes for a big crowd to see the game.
U.N.I. is 23-3 overall.
Three weeks after sitting in the basement of the Big Ten the Iowa Hawkeye women are now tied for fourth. The Hawks exploded to a 22 point lead at the half and rolled past Minnesota 75-54, their seventh win in eight games.
Iowa coach Lisa Bluder says the game felt good and with a 22 point lead at the half, there was not much to complain about. She says the team got momentum early in the first half.
Iowa is 8-7 in the Big Ten and 15-11 overall.
The Iowa National Guard’s 83-acre facility near Des Moines has a new entry way designed to prevent terrorist attacks. Guard officials spent $1.5 million in federal money to enhance security measures at the main entrance to Camp Dodge in Johnston.
Adjutant General Tim Orr says the most noticeable change involves the roadway. It’s no longer a straight route. “You go through what they call a serpentine drive. And that serpentine drive has cables that are established on the side so you can’t just shoot through straight,” Orr said. “It controls your speed, it controls the flow of traffic.” The other changes include additional fencing, cables, barriers, guard booths and gates.
“If somebody did run through the security, did run high speed, we can raise the gates,” Orr said. “So it’s a constant series of measures to stop, but it prevents anyone from going at a high rate of speed straight into Camp Dodge.” The new gate brings the Iowa Guard into compliance with current national antiterrorism measures.
Orr says he believes Camp Dodge – with its 7,200 soldiers – is now among the most secure military facilities in the country.
A psychiatrist from a Waterloo hospital testified a 24-year-old Parkersburg man accused of murdering his former high school football coach told doctors he was seeing Satan and hearing voices the weekend before the shooting. Mark Becker is on trial, accused of shooting Aplington-Parkersburg coach Ed Thomas to death in June.
A doctor who met with Becker on a Monday — two days before the shooting — diagnosed him with schizophrenia. That weekend Becker told doctors he was seeing Satan and hearing voices that were telling him to do things. But on Tuesday afternoon Becker told a nurse he was no longer hearing voices and wanted to be discharged. He was allowed to leave the hospitals’ psychiatric unit at about five o’clock that afternoon.
The next morning Becker shot Thomas to death. Testimony in the trial is scheduled to resume at nine o’clock this morning in Butler County.
The Iowa Senate has passed a bill that would set an earlier curfew for some teenagers who are driving in Iowa. Under current law, 16- and 17-year-olds who hold an “intermediate” driver’s license are not allowed to drive after 12:30 a.m. The bill would impose a new, 11 p.m. curfew on those drivers.
Senator Merlin Bartz, a Republican from Grafton, argued it should be parents, not the state, setting the curfew. “Maybe we should have consulted the movie industry because they’re certainly need to have to move all of their movie schedules us,” Bartz says, “because a 9:30 movie in Mason City means that my 16-year-old has to get up in the middle of it to make it (home) by 11 o’clock.”
O.KayHenderson.com