If you come across Leighlla Andrews, this five-year-old will talk your ear off.  She speaks well for a little girl still not in kindergarten. She also listens. On Wednesday, her mother, Stephanie, went into diabetic seizure, a symptom of a condition she’d been diagnosed with only two years earlier.  Stephanie had written out specific instructions for [...]

CEDAR RAPIDS — Now at more than three years since the Cedar Rapids traffic cameras first went live, some elements remain true year after year. • Keep the speed under 67 on I-380 and you will avoid a $75 surprise in the mail weeks later. • Millions of dollars flow into the police department each year [...]

Picking a new pet from an animal shelter is the right thing to do for a lot of people. And when it comes to matching up potential owners with new pets, Cedar Rapids Animal Care and Control runs well ahead of national averages. Last year, the Cedar Rapids municipal animal shelter either adopted out or [...]

In the dead of winter, the Cedar Rapids Kernels don’t have any players assigned for the upcoming season.  Yet walking around the bowels of Veterans Memorial Stadium, the emptiness of the locker and equipment rooms stands out. Hardly any bats or baseballs can be found, as the Kernels are in the midst of an affiliate switch from [...]

On an evening of frozen land and thoughts of silica sand, dozens of people talked about why Allamakee County leaders should approve a proposed moratorium to keep silica sand mining out of the county until at least July 2014. “I am for the moratorium and so are the 800 signatures I have with me,” said [...]

Think back seven years, to the year 2005. The world was a different place.  Paying $4 a gallon to fill up a gas tank during the summer was unheard of.  Selling a home usually took no more than a fresh coat of paint and a few weeks of open houses, about the same amount of time [...]

MARION – For the first weeks and even months of her business, Jeanne White could only watch from the front porch. “It was really hard when it was going on,” said White of the constant construction on 10th Street in Marion.  “Forty-nine days for us when the street was closed off.” White and two others [...]

CEDAR RAPIDS — Five of the Iowans included in the “Perversion Files” of former Boy Scouts of America leaders released Thursday were Corridor residents. Four lived in Cedar Rapids and one lived in Coralville when the alleged incidents or convictions occurred. An Oregon law firm releases the documents on Thursday. There are thousands of files on [...]

MARION – A quarter is usually all you need to call from a payphone, but as cell phones replace landlines and technology upgrades loom, Linn County emergency responders are asking landline holders to pay an extra quarter every month. In the right column of the back page of the November 6 ballot in Linn County, voters [...]

With both the Cedar Rapids City Council and Linn County Board of Supervisors on board, will the push for a new casino in the Cedar Rapids area gain enough support to be up for a referendum in 2013 and pass with a majority vote? In a meeting last week with The Gazette’s editorial board, Steve Gray [...]

DAVENPORT – Call it the manufacturing of politics. In a state with relatively low unemployment, the presidential campaigns have spent their Iowa visits focused on plans for better-paying jobs and not simply more jobs. Yet instead of the politics of manufacturing, a Davenport company is in the midst of an intense surge until Election Day. Its business [...]

INDEPENDENCE — The new Independence Junior/Senior High School includes space for a “safe room,” the first ever in Buchanan County. On Friday, the district reported that FEMA will offer the Independence Community School District a $831,064 grant, including $733,292 in federal funds and $97,772 state funds, for the safe room, designed to “meet FEMA criteria [...]

In the third football season of stricter alcohol guidelines in place around Kinnick Stadium, police cited more than 100 people on Saturday for various violations related to the annual Iowa State-Iowa football game. The University of Iowa Public Safety Department reported a total of 140 violations, plus fifteen people taken to the Johnson County Jail under [...]

CEDAR RAPIDS –Eight days after police say two assailants attacked four students walking home from Cedar Rapids Washington High School, the most severely injured teen returned to class. Christian Meek, 15, has been out of school since the Aug. 21 incident in the 300 block of 20th Street SE. “It was a little bit rough but [...]

CEDAR RAPIDS — Two teenage boys are in police custody and facing felony charges after investigators say they attacked a group of four high school students after class on Tuesday. Police say Keenan Baker, 16, and Tyress Martin, 15, both of Cedar Rapids, are each charged with willful injury for their role in the severe [...]

Stephenie Meek says she usually picks up her son Christian from Cedar Rapids Washington High School — adding to the chaos her family has been through since Tuesday’s first day of school. “I showed up at school and they weren’t there,” said Meek.  “I called his friend and his friend told me they were unconscious [...]

  WATERLOO – As much of the summer of 2011 was marked by the return of Iowa National Guard soldiers and airmen, one unit will return into the combat zone. On Thursday afternoon, family and other loved ones of approximate 50 members of the 211th Air Ambulance unit offered their applause, their love and their [...]

Amid what the city of Cedar Rapids is calling a drought, the city is putting out the official call for people to water the trees on their property. In a news release Wednesday, city leaders said staffers are watering new trees to keep them alive, and that slightly older trees — two to three years [...]

DUBUQUE — After more than an hour in closed session last night, the Dubuque school board returned with a unanimous decision to fire superintendent Larie Godinez. Godinez had held the position since 2009 and was being paid $180,000 a year. An employment termination agreement released after the meeting provides about six months’ severance pay — [...]

VINTON — Broken trees still can be found in this town of 5,000, ten months after a storm packing 100-mph winds blew through in the middle of the night. “We estimate that, maybe, 80 percent of our trees were damaged on July 11,” Mayor John Watson said. A gravel lot in town is filled with [...]