Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Although state health officials are hesitant to take data gathered during the first six months of 2010 and uniformly use it as a predictor of what’s to come, the data gathered for the first part of 2010 does offer some potential insights into HIV/AIDS diagnosis across the state.
Perhaps most troubling is that while diagnoses for most age groups has declined in recent years, diagnoses among persons between the ages of 15 and 24 have doubled from 2007 to 2009. According to state officials, the number of new diagnoses of HIV and AIDS cases from this group during the first half of 2010 makes it very likely that at least the same number of people in the age group will learn they have the disease this year as in 2009.
New diagnoses among white, non-Hispanics are so far down from last year, but the rate of diagnoses among black, non-Hispanics for the first half of 2010 already exceeds the total number from all 12 months of 2009 by one.
“While it cannot be shown definitively, prevention education messages may be motivating persons who have not previously tested to evaluate their risk of infection and then go for testing,” noted Jerry Harms, HIV/AIDS Surveillance Coordinator for the state.
Currently, Iowa is home to 1,795 persons who are living with either HIV or AIDS. To date for 2010, the Iowa Department of Public Health has identified nine HIV-infected Iowans who have died, but that number may increase as the state agency compares its information with the Social Security Death Master File and other national data.
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