Iowa Republican lawmakers continue to work toward advancing a bill that would ban nearly all abortions after roughly six weeks of pregnancy. Protesters have been at the statehouse since morning in opposition to the bill.
If passed, the legislation, will prohibit abortions after cardiac activity is detected in an embryo, which doctors can say can happen as early as six weeks gestation. That will mark a sharp deviation from Iowa's current law, which allows abortion up to 22 weeks after a woman's last menstrual period.
The Iowa House and Senate gaveled in to begin the session around 8:30 a.m. and are set to hold a final vote tonight.
A search for human remains continues this week at the site of a former native American boarding school in central Nebraska .
Workers are looking for a hidden cemetery near the former Genoa Indian Industrial School in Nebraska gained renewed interest after the discovery of hundreds of children’s remains at other Native American boarding school sites across the U.S. and Canada since 2021.
The team hasn't found human remains yet, but the dig only began on Monday and is expected to last through the week.
With the 50th RAGBRAI looming, the Sioux City Public Library is now featuring a new display focused on the local history of the Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa.
Through August, the Sioux City Public Library's Aalfs Downtown location will display "Fifty Years of RAGBRAI: 1973-2023" which it bills as "highlighting the rides and its many starts in Siouxland."
The display includes newspaper clippings documenting the history of the event, which has started in Sioux City seven times before (1973, 1978, 1988, 1993, 2001, 2010, 2015) and will launch from Sioux City on Sunday, July 23.
At the beginning of the month, the Sioux City Public Museum opened a RAGBRAI exhibit of its own which incorporates T-shirts, signage and riding gear and an extensive slideshow with images from the years in which Sioux City was a host city.
Chris Larsen Park, Cook Park and Headington Park will become an official campground for RAGBRAI riders. The Sioux City Council passed a resolution approving the change at yesterday’s council meeting. City Parks Director Matt Salvatore says residents should stay away from the areas when bike riders will begin arriving around July 21st.
The Riviera Theater at City Centre will host four showings of “Shift: The RAGBRAI Documentary” on July 22. The film is directed by Des Moines Register journalists Courtney Crowder and Kelsey Kremer. It follows three riders and a pair of community leaders as they reach new personal heights, changing their lives in seven days and finding themselves—literally and metaphorically—in the middle of nowhere.
Augustana University will begin offering an undergraduate major and minor in bioinformatics this fall, the first program of its kind in the state, according the Argus Leader.
Augustana is the only university in the region to require courses in both data science and artificial intelligence (AI) because of their increasing importance in all computational sciences, according to a press release from the university.
The programs will consist of courses in biology, computer science, mathematics and chemistry, and a new bioinformatics capstone course that will allow students to put together a portfolio of their work for their future careers.
