As he heads off to the “happy hunting grounds” of California to stalk economic development prospects, Gov. Terry Branstad says the $7.5 million owed the state by companies that failed to meet their job creation targets is a “relatively small amount.” Still, the governor said Monday, the state will go after those companies in an [...]

The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics said this week it will change procedures to reduce food waste, following a Gazette investigation about the hospital throwing away $181,000 worth of prepared food last year. The hospital, which serves about 10,000 meals a day, will eliminate Styrofoam and nonrecyclable plastic from its cafeterias, allowing the hospital [...]

University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, which wasted about 350,000 servings of food worth $181,000 in the last year, could do more to reduce food waste, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad said. “I would hope they could do better than that,” Branstad told The Gazette. “The bigger the institution, the smaller percentage of waste they should [...]

IOWA CITY — University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics threw away 355,000 servings of food worth $181,600 in the year that ended Nov. 30 — a waste of 12 percent of food prepared for employees and visitors at the state’s largest hospital. Among unsold food tossed in a single November day were 160 servings of [...]

CORALVILLE – Nick Birtcher closed his bank account because he needed the $7 that was keeping it open. “It was a decision to cancel my account and utilize the funds or keep the $7 in there and not have food for the day,” the 33-year-old Coralville man said. But when Birtcher tried to cash his [...]

For six months, Joshua Casteel slept 100 yards from an open-air burn pit that devoured everything from plastics and paint to electronics and human body parts. The Cedar Rapids native didn’t know smoke from the pit may also have been devouring his lungs. Casteel, a 32-year-old writer and peace activist, died Aug. 25 of lung [...]

Sales tax exemptions, often handed out as political favors, cost Iowa an estimated $2.4 billion a year in revenue. The list of exemptions — including everything from animal feed and grain dryers to carwash soap and dry-cleaning chemicals — gets longer every year and no lawmaker wants to suggest a repeal for fear of being [...]

  A gallon of milk costs just 20 cents at Wheatland Grocery & Meats — but only if you pay with coins minted before 1965. “If we still had real money, that’s what milk would be costing,” store owner Rodney Lange said. The milk promotion is designed to get Lange’s customers thinking about price inflation [...]