Erin Jordan

Family members and first responders gathered Thursday in Palisades-Kepler State Park to remember Zyah Thomas on the anniversary of her death and talk about ways to prevent future drownings on Iowa waterways.

Last summer, the phone number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline was cut to three digits — 988 — to make it easier for people to connect with help. Before the change, the service logged about 12,000 calls per year. After the change, more than 31,000 calls were received in one year.

If your holiday plans include a dip in a nearby lake -- good news -- most of Iowa’s 40 state park beaches have water quality within safe standards for swimming this week. Seven don’t, so take a look at our list.

In its 20th year, the Iowa Project AWARE summer cleanup is July 9 to 14 and covers 65 miles of the middle Iowa River from east of Marshalltown to Belle Plaine.

Iowa’s EV charging landscape still is uneven, with metro areas generally having enough charging stations -- although not always fast chargers -- but some rural communities lacking even one public charging station.

American farmers planted 94.1 million acres of corn this year, up 6 percent from last year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported Friday.

Wings 2 Water, a water quality not-for-profit linked to the Eastern Iowa Airport, this week awarded $25,000 in grants to local environmental projects.

In Iowa, nearly 44 percent of adults have guns in their homes,

The Iowa Supreme Court says a former Division of Criminal Investigation agent who alleged he was fired in 2013 for being a whistleblower can’t retroactively seek extra civil damages.

The sense Iowa’s agricultural land is both scarce and gaining value has driven the average price to a record-setting $11,400 per acre last year. Now Iowa farmers are bidding not only against neighbors, but out-of-state investors including professional athletes, well-known billionaires and the Mormon Church.

The Sustainable Iowa Land Trust (SILT) has preserved 1,200 acres on 16 farms since 2015. The West Branch nonprofit’s mission is to preserve Iowa farmland for sustainable table food. A new campaign, Circle Our Cities, sets a goal of creating 10 permanent food farms around 10 Iowa cities in 10 years.

CapCO2 Solutions and Adkins Energy LLC, based in Lena, Illinois, will partner for a project to test technology that would capture CO2 at the plant, combine it with hydrogen and turn it into green methanol -- a desirable renewable fuel.

Iowa’s farmland owners are getting older and while that means their land likely will change hands soon, it probably won’t go to beginning farmers, according to the results of a new survey.

Royceann’s Soul Food serves a daily special for $18 that comes with a choice of fried catfish, a pork chop or chicken wings and then two sides from a list that includes candied yams, corn on the cob, fried cabbage, mac and cheese, spaghetti and corn bread.

Iowa has named Michelle Waddle, deputy warden from the Anamosa State Penitentiary, to become warden of the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women in Mitchellville.