Founded in 2010
News & Entertainment for Mason City, Clear Lake & the Entire North Iowa Region
DES MOINES – The Iowa legislature met in Des Moines Wednesday and worked on a number of bills and heard a presentation from the Iowa National Guard. Senate Floor Action, Wednesday, January
From James Q. Lynch, CR Gazette – The Iowa Executive Council voted 4-0 Tuesday to hire Des Moines attorney George LaMarca as outside counsel for $325 an hour to represent Gov. Terry Branstad
MASON CITY – It appears a rash of vandalism has struck Mason City. NorthIowaToday.com received notice from two readers that windows were being shot out around the city. The Mason City Police
By Steve Mills and Jason Meisner, Chicago Tribune – CHICAGO — Cook County prosecutors said on Tuesday they would not retry four men who won new trials late last year in a 1994
By Hanns-Jochen Kaffsack ROME — The captain of the capsized Costa Concordia, Francesco Schettino, has made worldwide headlines as the “man to hate” after seemingly abandoning his ship and leaving passengers to
By Brian L. Cox, Chicago Tribune – CHICAGO — A “Gender Identity Committee” will decide where a transgender woman with an extensive criminal record will be housed after she was sentenced this week
By David G. Savage, Tribune Washington Bureau – WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court rarely gives criminal defendants a second chance if they miss a deadline to file an appeal, but the justices did
By Nathaniel Popper, Los Angeles Times – NEW YORK — A major investigation of insider trading on Wall Street extended beyond the exclusive world of New York hedge funds when federal agents arrested
James Oliphant and Seema Mehta, Los Angeles Times – As expected, Republicans are seizing upon the Obama administration’s reported decision to delay the permitting process for the Keystone XL pipeline project, contending that President Obama is missing
Neela Banerjee and Christi Parsons, Los Angeles Times – The Obama administration has decided that it will not issue a permit before Feb. 21 for the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada, according
By Broderick Turner, Los Angeles Times – LOS ANGELES — Shaquille O’Neal sat all of his 7-foot, 300-plus-pound frame down in a black chair in the green room for TNT’s “Inside the NBA”
By K.C. Johnson, Chicago Tribune – CHICAGO — C.J. Watson has wanted no part of the running joke, even in light-hearted private moments. But after scoring 23 points Tuesday night in the Bulls’
By Mike Berardino, Sun Sentinel – MIAMI — The Dwyane Wade 30th Birthday Bash just keeps on rolling. It wasn’t enough, apparently, for Wade to spend Sunday night partying with famous friends like
Scott Dochterman, CR Gazette – WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Iowa had its third Big Ten road win in the bag Tuesday night, only to squander it away in Mackey Arena. Iowa led
Jeremy Gorner, Kate Thayer and Rex W. Huppke, Chicago Tribune – Video of a 17-year-old being kicked and punched repeatedly in a snow-covered alley in Chicago’s Armour Square grew into a viral Internet sensation, sparking
By Seema Mehta, Los Angeles Times – FLORENCE, S.C. — As Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum battle to emerge as the socially conservative alternative to GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney, they have largely
MASON CITY – Kory John Ferden, age 24, was booked into the Cerro Gordo County Jail at 11:24 AM on Tuesday to serve the remaining 20 hours of a two day sentence
By Hailey Branson-Potts, Christopher Goffard and Nicole Santa Cruz, Los Angeles Times – SANTA ANA, Calif. — He would select the homeless men and then hunt them down, prosecutors said, waiting for the
Jessica Bernstein-Wax, The Marin Independent Journal, Novato, Calif. – Anyone planning to look up Paul Revere’s birthday on Wikipedia or scan Reddit for cute photos of baby dolphins will be out of luck
John Timpane, Philadelphia Inquirer – Hundreds of millions of Internet users will go online Wednesday and find their favorite websites . . . dark. In a gigantic Internet protest, thousands of sites will
By Maeve Reston and Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times – FLORENCE, S.C. — Mitt Romney has made his successful business career a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, saying his hands-on experience in
By Lynn Thompson, The Seattle Times – SEATTLE — An effort to collect enough signatures to place a Seattle plastic-bag ban before voters has fallen short. Craig Keller, a Republican activist who organized
By Dave Montgomery, McClatchy Newspapers – GREENVILLE, S.C. — Texas Gov. Rick Perry temporarily shelved his hard-hitting rhetoric on the campaign trail Tuesday night, choosing instead to talk about his faith before several
By Scott Gold, Andrew Blankstein and Victoria Kim, Los Angeles Times – LOS ANGELES — The frozen business empire of Pinkberry was always about control. Dating back to Pinkberry’s first shop in West
By Jim Puzzanghera and Richard Verrier, Los Angeles Times – WASHINGTON — Until this week, entertainment industry executives thought they had the votes for new federal legislation cracking down on foreign websites that
By Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times – SEATTLE — In a new package of policies criticized even by some hunters, the Alaska Board of Game on Tuesday opened the door to aerial gunning
CERRO GORDO COUNTY – An auto accident Tuesday morning left one person injured. Cynthia Sue Philip, 40, of Osage, was backing out of a field drive way on County Road B-30 at
Editorial by Matt Marquardt – Let’s examine last night’s city council meeting; more specifically, how well the mayor and each council member served the citizens. Mayor Eric Bookmeyer gave his state of
January 18, 2012 I watched the city council meeting last night, it was like reading a novel where you already knew the ending. Not much fun and none of the back and
MASON CITY – Mayor Eric Bookmeyer gave his annual state of the city report.
MASON CITY – Watch video of the Mason City City Council open forum, which is held at the end of every city council meeting. The public may address the council and mayor
McClatchy-Tribune News Service – The U.S. immigration system is a capricious and convoluted bureaucracy. Take, for example, the rules that children and spouses of U.S. citizens must navigate to legalize their status.
By Tom Lasseter and Kevin G. Hall, McClatchy Newspapers – BEIJING — Most days, the announcement of an $8.5 billion joint venture oil deal between Saudi Arabia and China wouldn’t raise eyebrows. Riyadh,
By Steve Johnson, San Jose Mercury News – SAN JOSE, Calif. — You might want to think twice about bad-mouthing your former boss on Facebook or posting those racy pictures of yourself from
By Joe Flint, Los Angeles Times – LOS ANGELES — The Golden Globes Awards are over, but a battle for the show’s future is just starting. The Hollywood Foreign Press Assn., which created
By Gail Pennington, St. Louis Post-Dispatch – Should “American Idol” be running scared? Arriving in June 2002, the competition (spun off from the UK hit “Pop Idol”) hardly took TV by storm. Fewer
By Rong-Gong Lin II, Los Angeles Times – LOS ANGELES — In a major defeat for porn studios, the Los Angeles City Council has given final approval to a city ordinance requiring porn
By Gina Barreca, The Hartford Courant – If you’re around my age, which can be defined as “too old for work-study but too young for cremation,” you might already know what I’ve only
By David Lightman, McClatchy Newspapers – FLORENCE, S.C. — Mitt Romney tried Tuesday to defuse a growing controversy dogging his front-runner campaign for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination by saying that he “probably”
By John Horn and Steven Zeitchik, Los Angeles Times – LOS ANGELES — There are better prophets of the Academy Awards than the Golden Globes — last year, the voters in the Hollywood