Editor Lyle Muller is leaving The Gazette after 25-plus years to become executive director of the non-profit Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism. Muller, 58, of North Liberty , was named editor in 2009. He has been with The Gazette since 1987. Over those years, he also served as a reporter, Johnson County bureau chief, Iowa City [...]

JOHNSTON – The leader of the Iowa Senate gives a proposed gas-tax increase a 50-50 chance in the Legislature this session. Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, said the only way an increase in the state’s user fee on motor fuel will make it to Gov. Terry Branstad’s desk is if it has broad [...]

Employees at Iowa’s three public universities spend millions each year on company credit cards issued in their names, and only four times in the past 10 to 15 years have the cards been misused. School officials say multiple levels of oversight keep most employees honest while using the “procurement cards.” Last year the cards were used [...]

  The economy and tuition costs may have led to an unexpected shift at the University of Northern Iowa — more part-time students and fewer full-time students. The shift to part-time enrollment among undergraduate students — nearly 240 more part-time and 220 fewer full-time — contributed to a $1.4 million tuition shortfall this year, UNI officials [...]

In just seven years, a ditch through an Allamakee County cornfield has been transformed into a tall-grass-prairie stream in which Iowa’s only native strain of trout flourishes. Mike Osterholm, the landowner who orchestrated the transformation, calls it “a miracle in nature.” “It is a testament to what Mother Nature can do with some help,” said Osterholm, [...]

  Although organizations are relying more than ever on free labor, Iowa has managed to continue growing a strong force of volunteers who don’t just serve once — they keep coming back. Iowa ranks No. 1 in the nation in volunteer retention and No. 2 in overall volunteer rate, according to Volunteering in America, an [...]

  The 1-month-old baby didn’t stand a chance, even with the best care available at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. Suffering from whooping cough and in grave condition when brought to the Iowa City hospital, the tiny boy became one of the victims of a vaccine-preventable disease. Dr. Jody Murph, associate professor of pediatrics [...]

IOWA CITY — University of Iowa officials have accepted the fact that fans are going to resell Hawkeye tickets for more than face value, so they’ve forged a partnership to capitalize and improve on that secondary market. At the start of this fall’s Hawkeye football season, the UI signed a contract with StubHub.com, an online marketplace where anyone [...]

MONTICELLO — At a time when college graduates are struggling to find jobs, employers in vocational fields are struggling to find trained workers. “Good machinists are in their mid- to late 50s,” said Kevin Boyens of Boyens Machining Inc. in Marion. “This group is nearing retirement. There aren’t enough trained individuals to take their place.” [...]

  In a smallish room near inmate cells at the Iowa Medical and Classification Center in Coralville lives Bilbo Baggins of “The Hobbit” and Luke Skywalker battles the Empire in “Star Wars.” One hundred miles west, in the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women, occasional sport jackets and skirts add variety to a monotonous prison wardrobe [...]

Iowa colleges and universities have spent hundreds of thousands — and in some cases, millions — to boost campus wireless systems to keep up with technology demands. Smartphones, laptops and tablets like the iPad have fueled the wireless fire on campuses and even at K-12 schools. Higher education officials said they’ve seen huge increases in demand [...]

  Harvest is a stressful time for farmers, but especially so in parts of East Iowa blasted by a summer windstorm. The powerful, straight-line winds with 100-plus-mph gusts that swept through early July 11 damaged not only crops but wiped out farmers’ and grain cooperatives’ storage bins and elevators. The damage has cooperatives in and [...]

Walk a Mile in Her Shoes When: 1 p.m. Saturday Where: Iowa Avenue and Clinton Street, in front of the University of Iowa Pentacrest Information: http://www.walkamileinhershoes.org   Band on the Run 5K Fun Run/Walk When: 4 p.m. Saturday, followed by Appetite for Marion Where: Marion Square Park Information: http://www.spandainc.com   Especially for You Race Against Breast Cancer What: 5K race, 5K walk and one-mile family fun walk [...]

The Gazette’s Scott Dochterman and Tom Kakert with HawkeyeReport.com are talking University of Iowa basketball, especially last week’s recruiting coup of Sioux City East’s Adam Woodbury.

  CEDAR RAPIDS — In a building badly damaged by the 2008 flood, Brooke Fitzgerald hopes to realize her entrepreneurial dreams through downtown’s newest coffee shop, the Early Bird. Does downtown already boast enough coffee shops, though? Set to open in early October, the new cafe at 221 Third Ave. SE will join the Coffee Emporium, 220 [...]

  Although a national study found a drastic drop in the involvement of women in churches over the past 20 years, Eastern Iowa still sees plenty of female faces in the pews, as well as at the altar. Barna Group , a research company in Ventura, Calif., that focuses on the intersection of faith and culture, reports [...]

  WASHINGTON — We were one. Or so it seemed for a while, at least. “America is united,” President George W. Bush proclaimed a decade ago after the horror that terrorists wrought. And it felt that way. Not Republicans. Not Democrats. Just Americans clinging to one another as we coped with the attacks on our [...]

Some of the fundamental changes to Americans’ legal rights by the Bush administration and the Patriot Act following the terrorist attacks: Freedom of association Government may monitor religious and political institutions without suspecting criminal activity to assist terror investigation. Freedom of information Government closed once-public immigration hearings, secretly detained hundreds of people without charges and encouraged bureaucrats [...]