Wednesday Afternoon News, September 18

       Brad Echter (eck-tur) of the Sioux City Police helped organize the honor guard:

        Captain Haynes was the pilot of Flight 232 flying from Denver to Chicago in 1989 when the DC-10 sustained hydraulic failure and made a crash landing in Sioux City.

        While over 100 passengers perished in the flight, miraculously over 180 survived the crash.

         Echter says Haynes children told him they would love to have the Sioux City honor Guard at their father’s service:

         United Airlines offered to fly the Honor guard to the service at the airline’s expense.

         Echter says two police officers, two fire fighters and two Woodbury County deputies will make up the Honor Guard.

——–

On September 9, 2019, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued an order filing and simultaneously settling charges against Nathan Harris, a CFTC registrant of Akron, Iowa for fraud, unauthorized trading and violating speculative position limits in live cattle futures contracts.  The order imposes a civil monetary penalty of $1,250,000 and permanent restrictions on Harris’s registration with the CFTC.  The order imposes restrictions on Harris’s registration as an associated person, which include certain permanent restrictions such as Harris’s business-related telephone calls must be recorded and his sponsoring firm must conduct quartly on-site compliance reviews of Harris’s conduct.  Harris has agreed to pay a fine of 1.25 million arising out of the conduct that is the subject of the CFTC’s order.

———

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Iowa’s governor is defending a law she signed earlier this year that prohibits Medicaid payment for gender reassignment surgery after California’s attorney general prohibited state-funded travel to Iowa.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra on Friday added Iowa to a list of 10 other states for which state-funded travel isn’t allowed because they violate a 2017 California law that guards against discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a bill in May that reversed an Iowa Supreme Court ruling guaranteeing protection under the Iowa Civil Rights Act for Medicaid-funded gender reassignment surgery.

Becerra says California takes an unambiguous stand against discrimination. He says the California prohibition on state-funded or sponsored travel to Iowa begins in October.

Reynolds on Wednesday defended the law as a narrow provision clarifying longstanding state policy in response to the court ruling. A lawsuit challenging the new law is now before the Iowa Supreme Court.

After justifying the law, Reynolds described California, home to more than 10% of the U.S. population, as a state with high taxes, excessive business costs and expensive housing.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) – It seems this love was too hot to handle.

Police in Lincoln say a 19-year-old woman sparked an apartment fire Monday by burning love letters from her ex in her bedroom.

Police say the woman used a butane torch to burn the letters and left some of them of the floor. She then went to another room to take a nap. Police say she awoke a short time later to find the carpet on fire.

Firefighters were able to extinguish the fire within minutes. Officials say the fire caused an estimated $4,000 in damage to the building. No one was injured.

The woman was cited for negligent burning.

AP-WF-09-18-19 1649GMT

AP-WF-09-18-19 1929GMT