Gazette Daily News Podcast, August 15

Be sure to subscribe to The Gazette Daily News podcast, or just tell your Amazon Alexa enabled device to "enable The Gazette Daily News skill" so you can get your daily briefing by simply saying "Alexa, what's the news?" If you prefer podcasts, you can also find us on iTunes or wherever else you find your podcasts.

This is John McGlothlen with The Gazette digital news desk and I'm here with your update for Monday, August 15th.

According to the National Weather Service, today in the Cedar Rapids area we can expect mostly cloudy skies, with a high near 78. Winds from the east around 5 mph. And tonight, we’ll have a 30 percent chance of showers, mainly after 1 a.m. and a low around 62.

A suspect in a Nebraska double homicide was arrested after barricading himself inside an Iowa church on Sunday. West Des Moines Police Sgt. Jason Heintz said 27-year-old Gage Walter of Omaha ultimately surrendered and was arrested after several hours of negotiating with authorities from inside the church in Winterset, Iowa. Heintz said Walter fled when police tried to pull him over in West Des Moines Sunday morning and led officers on a chase for about 45 minutes before abandoning his vehicle and entering St. Paul Lutheran Church. Walter is a suspect in the deaths of two women, whose bodies were found Saturday inside an Omaha home. Police called their deaths suspicious, but didn't release details of how they died. Investigators were searching for a car stolen from the home where the bodies were found.

Linn County Auditor Joel Miller, in campaigning Saturday at the Iowa State Fair, said he’s running for secretary of state to “make voting easy again.” Miller said advocating for laws that make in-person and absentee voting easier would be his prime focus as secretary of state, the top elections official in the state. He criticized current Secretary of State Paul Pate, a Republican, for not opposing legislation that opponents said curtailed voting rights. Iowa Republicans passed a wide-ranging voting law in 2021 that cut the state’s early voting period from 29 days to 20. The law also made general election polls close an hour earlier, required absentee ballots to arrive to county auditors by the end of Election Day no matter their postmark, and limited the options for county auditors to facilitate early and satellite voting. Proponents of the law said it was an effort to enhance election security.

–

🎹 Podcast music: “World” by Emily McGlothlen