The Iowa Broadcast News Association’s forum with former Gov. Terry Branstad, Rep. Rod Roberts and Bob Vander Plaats will be carried live at 3:30 p.m. on IPTV World, and rebroadcast at 9 p.m. on Iowa Public Television. In addition, the program will be replayed during May on Mediacom MC22 and via Mediacom on Demand. It will also be streamed live at www.IBNA.org and www.IPTV.org.

Due to space limitations at the association’s annual meeting, the event is not open to the general public.

The debate comes less than 40 days before the June 8 primary to determine which Republican will face fist-term Democrat Gov. Chet Culver.

For the candidates, it will be their second side-by-side appearance before a statewide audience. Branstad, who has debated opponents in 10 contested elections, said debates probably aren’t the most important aspect of the campaign, but can’t be overlooked.

“They’re something you need to do and you have to take them seriously,” the four-term governor said. “I’ve always felt that if you’re running for public office you have an obligation to the public to debate your opponents so the voters can get a chance to see and contrast your knowledge and your vision with that of your opponents.”

The debate may be the most important event in the campaign so far for Roberts, who is making his first bid for the GOP nomination. He’s still introducing himself to Iowa voters, so the debates are “strategically important,” Roberts said.

“As the new candidate in a field with two individuals with higher name identification, it provides me with three opportunities to raise my name ID,” he said. “I can tell you, the first debate benefited me greatly.”

Branstad believes the debate gives him an opportunity “to demonstrate my knowledge and my passion for Iowa and my commitment to achieve ambitious goals we’ve set.”

Roberts sees the debate as “one more platform to introduce myself to even more Iowans as to who Rod Roberts is and why he is a credible candidate for governor.

Three Republicans hoping to win their party’s nomination for governor will square off in a 90-minute televised forum May 1 in Cedar Rapids.

The Iowa Broadcast News Association’s forum with former Gov. Terry Branstad, Rep. Rod Roberts and Bob Vander Plaats will be carried live at 3:30 p.m. on IPTV World, and rebroadcast at 9 p.m. on Iowa Public Television. In addition, the program will be replayed during May on Mediacom MC22 and via Mediacom on Demand. It will also be streamed live at www.IBNA.org and www.IPTV.org.

Due to space limitations at the association’s annual meeting, the event is not open to the general public.

The debate comes less than 40 days before the June 8 primary to determine which Republican will face fist-term Democrat Gov. Chet Culver.

For the candidates, it will be their second side-by-side appearance before a statewide audience. Branstad, who has debated opponents in 10 contested elections, said debates probably aren’t the most important aspect of the campaign, but can’t be overlooked.

“They’re something you need to do and you have to take them seriously,” the four-term governor said. “I’ve always felt that if you’re running for public office you have an obligation to the public to debate your opponents so the voters can get a chance to see and contrast your knowledge and your vision with that of your opponents.”

The debate may be the most important event in the campaign so far for Roberts, who is making his first bid for the GOP nomination. He’s still introducing himself to Iowa voters, so the debates are “strategically important,” Roberts said.

“As the new candidate in a field with two individuals with higher name identification, it provides me with three opportunities to raise my name ID,” he said. “I can tell you, the first debate benefited me greatly.”

Branstad believes the debate gives him an opportunity “to demonstrate my knowledge and my passion for Iowa and my commitment to achieve ambitious goals we’ve set.”

Roberts sees the debate as “one more platform to introduce myself to even more Iowans as to who Rod Roberts is and why he is a credible candidate for governor.

Vander Plaats campaign manager Eric Woolson agreed the debate will be an opportunity for Iowans to contrast the candidates and their views.

“It’s another opportunity for Iowans to see Bob Vander Plaats, some for the first time, and see the differences between the three of them,” Woolson said.

Vander Plaats, he said, will be talking about those issues that distinguish him from his rivals – immigration, economic development and education, for example.

Looking beyond the primary, Vander Plaats will emphasize his differences with Culver “and why he is the best Republican candidate to challenge the incumbent,” Woolson said.

Roberts likes the 24-question, 90-minite format of the IBNA debate,

“That’s ample time for most people to get a pretty good sense of how we are different as candidates,” he said. “With that many questions, it provides enough opportunity to distinguish yourself from the others that viewers will be able to see contrasts between the three of us.”

A third debate, sponsored by the Des Moines Register, is planned May 20.

Roberts likes the 24-question, 90-minite format of the IBNA debate,

“That’s ample time for most people to get a pretty good sense of how we are different as candidates,” he said. “With that many questions, it provides enough opportunity to distinguish yourself from the others that viewers will be able to see contrasts between the three of us.”

A third debate, sponsored by the Des Moines Register, is planned May 20.

“To me, it’s not the same as a one-pitcher no-hitter,” said Kernels Manager Bill Mosiello. “But it’s still great. The neat thing for them is that three guys get to share in this.”

Mark Brown (Photo from the Pittsburg Post-Gazette)

Middle school students all over America are wounding each other, and they’re a little like the torch-bearing mob in “Beauty and the Beast,” a speaker told an auditorium full of students at Mount Vernon Middle School on Friday afternoon.

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but unkind words? They’ll break my heart. And there is no surgery,” said Mark Brown, a youth speaker who specializes in talking to junior high students about bullying and has been speaking at Iowa schools all week. Earlier Friday he spoke at West Middle School in Anamosa. On Thursday he was in Solon and Iowa City.

Brown, a native of Jamaica, works for QSP, Inc., a company that helps schools raise money by selling magazine subscriptions. He spends most of his time on the road — 200 speeches a year, 1 million kids, 47 states, six Canadian provinces — and his speech about bullying is honed to a fine point.

He started Friday by outlining the key characters in Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.” He sang, he moved around the room, he made sound effects, and he made fun of himself. The jokes turned serious after he sang aloud a few lines from the song the mob of torch-bearing villagers sing as they prepare to storm the beast’s castle:

We don’t like
What we don’t understand
In fact it scares us
And this monster is mysterious at least
Bring your guns
Bring your knives
Save your children and your wives
We’ll save our village and our lives
We’ll kill the Beast!

After singing this, Brown stopped and said it aloud. Students often take the same attitude with other students who are different.

“Not every middle school kid has great friends at school,” he said. Many of them have “plastic smiles” and deep pain behind the plastic, because all they get is picked on, and all they want is for someone to extend a hand of kindness, but no one does.

Brown said he was bullied by three sixth-grade girls when he was in grade school — and he’s never forgotten it. He recited the names of the three girls.

“How are the people in this room going to feel deep down 38 years from now when they hear your name?” he asked.

Some students are like Gaston, Belle’s spurned suitor in Beauty and the Beast: they lead the charge against those who are different, and spread damaging rumors as they go. Others are like the villagers who follow him. Others still are like the Beast, friendless, misunderstood and persecuted.

By a show of hands, the roughly 400 students in the room admitted that each group exists at Mount Vernon Middle School. Brown said everyone fits each description at one time or another.

At the end of the talk, he asked the students to be like Belle, who reached out to someone who was different, even though she took grief for it, and she unlocked the prince that was there all along.

Ben Logan, an eighth grader in the audience, said he’s one of the “weird people” in school, and he likes unpopular kids, but he thought Brown’s speech was the best summary of middle school politics he’d heard.

“It helps the younger kids understand,” he said.

Lauren Adams, another eighth grader, said students at Mount Vernon Middle School talk about bullying at least once every two weeks, and it’s helpful. The problem is, being like Belle isn’t always easy. Reaching out to someone who’s picked on, can get you picked on.

“I think,” Adams said, “it depends on who you’re friends with.”

A Cedar Rapids school bus driver has been placed on administrative leave while the school district investigates a parent’s allegation that he assaulted her 11-year-old son.

Felicia Kennedy-Morris, mother of Arthur Elementary fourth-grader Abu Gasaway, said her son’s hand was injured when bus driver Keith Jensen “slammed” him from one seat into another on April 22. She said Abu had his hands on the window, and Jensen came to the back to move him.

In an e-mail, Cedar Rapids Community Schools spokeswoman Marcia Hughes said the bus driver — she did not name him — is on administrative leave and the episode is under investigation. She could not be reached for further comment.

Counselor Jerry Davenport witnessed what happened, according to Kennedy-Morris, but Davenport referred questions to Hughes.

Kennedy-Morris has asked police to press charges against the bus driver.

She has a litany of complaints against Arthur Elementary and transportation officials at the school district, but without a fuller explanation of what happened from both sides of the issue, there’s not much to report.

She filed a complaint saying she wasn’t called after the incident or after her daughter Angelena had trouble on a different occasion with a bus driver.

Arthur Principal Bill Utterback wrote a response saying Kennedy-Morris called him 10 minutes after he learned of the incident. He thought the earlier problem for Angelena had been resolved by Ray Gongwer, a safety and training supervisor for the district.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Nikki Bradshaw Carpenter was tough: she could kill a deer and skin it. But when it came to her three sons, the 31-year-old mother was a nurturer and a protector.

Thus, friends and family say it came as no surprise to learn Carpenter had lost her life trying to shield her children from last weekend’s killer tornado.

Rodney Bradshaw, her cousin, said he found Carpenter pinned by two collapsed walls, a washing machine and a refrigerator. Two of her sons were beneath her; a third at her feet. All three children survived.

On Thursday, a funeral was held for Carpenter, one of the 10 Mississippi victims of the severe weather system that kicked up tornadoes around the South and also left two dead in Alabama.

James Bradshaw said his daughter was just 5-foot-5 and slim, but had a powerhouse personality.

“I don’t think she’s met anybody that she wouldn’t talk to,” Bradshaw said. “I used to take her hunting and fishing. She killed a deer this past season, hung the deer, skinned it and cut it up and put it in the freezer. She was very feisty.”

Bentonia Police Chief Edward Ferrell said an investigation supports the account of Carpenter’s final moments given by family members. Ferrell and other local emergency officials responded to calls by those hit hard by the storm’s rampage through Yazoo County.

Moments before the twister barreled down the rural road where she lived in a mobile home, Carpenter’s phone rang with a warning about the storm.

“We don’t know who called. We never recovered the phone. Whoever it was saved them,” said James Bradshaw, whose oldest grandson told him about the call.

Hoping to preserve precious memories, Carpenter pulled family photographs from the wall. Then, she grabbed the boys, piled pillows on top of them and covered them with her body. The twister lifted the trailer in the air like a paperclip, throwing it more than 100 yards, said Rodney Bradshaw.

The boys sustained some bruises. Bradshaw said his oldest grandson told him about her final minutes.

When Rodney Bradshaw, arrived at the scene, he said the sight was jarring: “The two littlest ones were under her. The oldest one was at her feet. I still can’t get her face out of my head.”

For now, Nicholas Layne, 7; Ethan, 2; and Austin, 1, are in the care of James Bradshaw, who lives in Florence, a small town southeast of Jackson.

He said a memorial service will be held for Carpenter in his hometown on May 8.