Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
A task force organized by Gov. Chet Culver will meet Thursday to discuss the disproportionate number of minority juveniles in the state’s detention centers.
The Youth Race and Detention Task Force will meet from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Iowa Workforce Development in Des Moines. A spokeswoman for the governor’s office did not have information on members of the task force, which was created last May. The meeting will include presentations by Des Moines Police officers, the Iowa Department of Corrections and Iowa Workforce Development.
The group is charged with finding ways to reduce the number of minority youth held in detention centers – the majority of whom are there for misdemeanor offenses — and prevent them from ending up in Iowa’s prisons. Iowa tops the nation for imprisoning blacks at a rate that is 13.6 times that of whites, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Sentencing Project.
The task force will have two years to study the issue and make recommendations about the state’s juvenile detention policies.
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