Convicted Iowa mink farm saboteur offers $2,500 defense fund September 30, 2008
Posted by John in Agriculture, Crime/Courts.Tags: Animal Liberation Front, animal-rights activism, minks, Peter Daniel Young, prison
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From modified Associated Press story via KUTV:
Animal-rights activist Peter Daniel Young, 30, says he’ll contribute $2,500 to the defense of anybody caught for Utah’s Sept. 21 raid in Kaysville, where thousands of mink were released from the Utah farm.
Young spent two years in federal prison for breaking into mink farms in Wisconsin, South Dakota and Iowa in 1997, cutting fences and freeing the animals from their cages. …
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Cedar Rapids woman is ‘Ready for my armload of books’ (Christian Science Monitor) September 29, 2008
Posted by John in Nature.Tags: Cedar Rapids (Iowa), Floods of 2008, Public Libraries
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Source: Christian Science Monitor:
A flood destroyed her beloved town library. But now there’s a plan to rebuild.
By Eudora Seyferfrom the September 29, 2008 edition
Plans are under way for a new library in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. As yet, we have no idea where it will be or even when it will be, but our city’s library board promises that a library is coming, and it will be even bigger and better and more beautiful than the library we lost in June.
I can hardly wait. …
Former Cedar Rapids man who later lived in a cave receives 23-year sentence for child-porn charges September 28, 2008
Posted by John in Children, Crime/Courts.Tags: caves, Cedar Rapids (Iowa), Child Pornography, Heber City (Utah), Ken Wallentine, Marion (Iowa), Ottumwa (Iowa), Polk City (Iowa), prison sentences, Russell Blessman, Salt Lake City (Utah), sexual abuse, US Marshals
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From Deseret News Saturday:
A man convicted on child pornography charges has been sentenced to serve 23 years in federal prison. Russell Eugene Blessman, 52, was sentenced in federal court in Salt Lake City earlier this week to serve 276 months in federal prison, and a lifetime of probation when he is released. …
October 2007 Gazette article:
Cedar Rapids native arrested in Utah on sexual abuse chargesThe GazetteA former resident of Cedar Rapids and Marion was arrested Wednesday in Utah on sexual abuse charges, according to the U.S. Marshals Service.
Acting on a tip, U.S. Marshals from Salt Lake City arrested Russell E. Blessman at a motel in Heber City, about 40 miles south of Salt Lake, said Deputy Michael Powell, spokesman for the U.S. Marshals in Iowa’s Southern District.
Blessman, 51, of Polk City, fled Iowa in June, after the Polk County Attorney charged him with two counts of second-degree sexual abuse involving an 8-year-old girl and one count of contempt of court for violating a no-contact order.
Police also seized several computers and computer storage devices from Blessman’s motel room. Ken Wallentine, chief of law enforcement at the Utah Attorney General’s Office, told the Deseret News in Salt Lake City that he was “virtually certain” Blessman will face additional child exploitation charges for child pornography found on those devices.
Wallentine said Blessman arrived in Utah in June and lived in a cave for a period.
Gazette archives show Blessman lived in Cedar Rapids and Marion, most recently in northeast Cedar Rapids 1998.
Additional details from October Deseret News, including:
Capture of Iowa sex suspect has bizarre twist
… While in Iowa, Wallentine said, Blessman paid someone a “substantial amount of money” to convert him into a Cherokee Indian. He then encouraged Blessman to go to Utah to hide out with a group near Green River that claims to be an Indian tribe.
Blessman traveled to Utah approximately four months ago and actually lived in a cave for some time, Wallentine said. He claims he was ordained a tribal police officer for the group. …
Gazette article about area woman’s bat-filtered coffee becomes one of Yahoo’s most e-mailed stories September 27, 2008
Posted by John in Medicine, Odd News.Tags: Ann Garvey, bats, coffee, Iowa Department of Public Health, pests, rabies, rodents
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See the brief AP version at Yahoo! News here; Gazette’s original article written by Cindy Hadish here.
Online record for Pierre Pierce disappears from Iowa Sex Offender Registry September 26, 2008
Posted by John in Crime/Courts, Sports.Tags: Alfredo Parrish, basketball, Bob Brammer, France, Iowa Attorney General, Iowa City (Iowa), Iowa Supreme Court, Pierre Pierce, sex offenders
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Page for Pierce’s information now just a question mark (as of this writing):
(?)
We could not find information about the person you are looking for.
The person may have been removed and is no longer viewable,
or the site may have made a mistake.
Here’s what the page used to look like.
Could this be a gap between page updates for approved travel to France, or just a site glitch?
Pierre Pierce allowed to travel to France
Earlier Tuesday, a three judge panel of the Iowa Supreme Court upheld a Dallas County District Court ruling that Pierce could travel to France. …
Pierce has signed a $120,000 contract with a team in France’s top professional basketball league. He is on probation for a January 2005 incident at the West Des Moines home of a former girlfriend. …
Cedar Rapids trucking company ranks in top 200 of InformationWeek 500 September 26, 2008
Posted by John in Business, Technology.Tags: CRST International, Data warehousing, InformationWeek, innovation, John Smith, transportation industry
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From PR Web (press release newswire):
Cedar Rapids, Iowa (PRWEB) September 26, 2008 — CRST International, one of the largest privately-held transportation companies in the country, today announced that it has been listed on the 2008 InformationWeek 500. This is the first time CRST has been chosen for the list, which focuses on innovation in technology. …
CRST was chosen for the list based on the technology used to create its new Data Warehouse, which provides managers the ability to track KPI’s, obtain more detailed reporting, and spot trends as they start. …
“CRST is pleased to be number 184 on the InformationWeek 500 for 2008,” said John Smith, President of CRST International. …
See controversial full-page University of Iowa basketball ads Gazette sports columnist Jim Ecker is writing about September 25, 2008
Posted by John in Sports.Tags: basketball, College Basketball, Fighting Illini, Hawkeye Sports, Iowa City (Iowa), Jarryd Cole, Jeff Peterson, Jim Ecker, Ohio State Buckeyes, Rick Klatt, University of Illinois, University of Iowa, University of Iowa Hawkeyes
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Related Jim Ecker columns:
Ad’s dunk didn’t happen, but it’s no mistake, Iowa says
College professors slam Iowa’s basketball ad
From recent Gazette archives:
Click on images to enlarge. ‘SLAM DUNK’ ads published on September 14 and September 18 in Gazette; ‘STEAL’ ad published on September 23.
Dude, our U.S. Senator just quoted you; Grassley uses Ashton Kutcher’s words and visual aid in floor speech (see pic/video) September 24, 2008
Posted by John in Energy, Entertainers, Political.Tags: Actors, Ashton Kutcher, Cedar Rapids (Iowa), chuck grassley, Pink Floyd, The Dark Side of the Moon
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[P]erhaps unwittingly, Grassley was on a roll with the stoner allusions, including a glance at the 2000 movie “Dude, Where’s My Car?” starring Iowa native Ashton Kutcher, which follows the travails of two potheads who can’t remember where, um, they left their car. After finishing with the [Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon] prism analogy, Grassley went on to talk about energy conservation, noting that many public officials have air-conditioned cars idling while waiting for them at curbs, wasting gas. Grassley proudly noted that he drives his own car, thank you very much, including a Ford Taurus he keeps in Iowa.
“If you do see anyone else driving my car, please call the police, because someone has stolen my car,” he said. “I’d like to refer to Ashton Kutcher here, from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, saying ‘dude, where’s my car?’” …
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Now search GazetteOnline, Gazette videos, Gazette blogs and KCRG content at one fell swoop September 23, 2008
Posted by John in Media, Technology.Tags: bloggers, blogs, Google Custom Search, KCRG, Search engines, The Gazette (Cedar Rapids Iowa), video
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Image via CrunchBase
For your convenience I’ve created a Google Custom Search Engine for precision searching of GazetteOnline.com content, Gazette video descriptions, Gazette blogs, and KCRG.com – 39 sites in all. Unfortunately, I’m unable to offer the search box here at ‘Looking in at Iowa’ but you can follow (and bookmark) this link to get started!
(Alternative search engine address: bit.ly/GFOCsearch)
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NACAC commission urges reduced use of ACT, SAT; Report questions value of scores to predict college success September 22, 2008
Posted by John in Education.Tags: ACT Inc, colleges and universities, higher education, Iowa City (Iowa), National Association for College Admission Counseling, University and college admissions
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From Education Week:
“Despite their prevalence in American high school culture, college-admission exams—such as the SAT and ACT—may not be critical to making good admission decisions at many of the colleges and universities that use them,” the report says. …
The commission was convened in late 2006 by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, based in Arlington, Va., partly in response to a rash of scoring errors on the SAT …
A year ago, more than 100 high school counselors and college-admissions officers packed a standing-room-only “listening meeting” of the commission in Austin, Texas that began airing questions about the utility of the SAT and the ACT, which is owned by Iowa City, Iowa-based ACT, Inc. …
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