Founded in 2010
News & Entertainment for Mason City, Clear Lake & the Entire North Iowa Region
By Tim Johnson, McClatchy Newspapers – MEXICO CITY —In a watershed turning point for Mexico, the once-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party prepared Sunday night to celebrate what a spokesman called the “resounding triumph”
By Jim Jaworski, Chicago Tribune – CHICAGO — Last weekend, members of a downstate Illinois pro-gun group drove to Chicago, handed in about 60 weapons to the city’s trade-in program and walked
By Tony Barboza, Los Angeles Times – LAKEWOOD, Colo. — Miles from any flames, on the fourth floor of an office building in the Denver suburbs, the central nervous system in the
By Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times – BEIRUT — The United States and other world powers threw their weight Saturday behind a United Nations-brokered plan for a transitional government for Syria,
By Ryan Maye Handy and Wayne Heilmamn, The Gazette – COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Firefighters gained 45 percent containment Saturday on the Waldo Canyon fire in Colorado and, after a week of
Los Angeles Times – At least 85 people were killed when a car bomb exploded during a funeral procession Saturday evening in the Syrian town of Zamalka, activists and human rights groups
By Thomas Curwen, Los Angeles Times – LOS ANGELES — Rodney King will always be remembered for that April 1991 night that changed the history of Los Angeles, but at his memorial
By Farrukh Azeem ISLAMABAD — A unmanned US aircraft targeted a compound in Pakistan’s north-western region along the Afghan border, killing six people on Sunday, an intelligence official said. The official said
By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times – AURORA, Colo. — Best friends Allie Young, 19, and Stephanie Davies, 21, sat in Young’s hospital room on the ninth floor of the University of
By Laura J. Nelson, Los Angeles Times – LOS ANGELES — The shifting of an Alaskan glacier has released wreckage and frozen remains from what is believed to be a military cargo
Maja Beckstrom, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn. – The Minnesota Historical Society has been thinking long and hard about how to tell the story of one of the most divisive turning points
By Tony Barboza, Los Angeles Times – COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — As thousands of evacuees were allowed to return to their homes in this fire-scorched area, President Barack Obama on Friday surveyed
By Patrick J. McDonnell and Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times – BEIRUT — The top U.S. and Russian diplomats failed to bridge critical differences about Syria on Friday during talks in Russia,
By John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times – MANITOU SPRINGS, Colo. — The state’s runaway fires have so far spared this mountain resort town, but as the traditionally hectic Fourth of July
By Roy Gutman, McClatchy Newspapers – BRUSSELS — Under intense pressure from Italy and Spain, whose borrowing costs have soared beyond the point of sustainability, the 17 countries that use the euro
By Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy Newspapers – CAIRO — When Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, the membership was just seven people — al-Banna and six other workers in the
By Tony Pugh, McClatchy Newspapers – WASHINGTON — Despite all the spin and punditry about the national health care law’s mandate that Americans buy health insurance or pay a penalty, the vast
By Anne Danahy, McClatchy Newspapers – BELLEFONTE, Pa. — Jerry Sandusky may be in prison, but that hasn’t brought an end to his pension payments. The convicted child molester retired from Penn
By David Pierson, Los Angeles Times – BEIJING — Passengers and flight crew helped foil a hijacking attempt Friday in the restive Chinese province of Xinjiang, the official New China News Agency
Diane Heldt, CR Gazette – IOWA CITY — A federal office has recommended reversing replacement decisions on three University of Iowa flood recovery projects, but UI officials today stressed that no de-obligation
By Noam N. Levey, Tribune Washington Bureau – WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama, in his drive for a national health care overhaul, strove to provide a new guarantee that all Americans, no
By Ramin Mostaghim and Paul Richter, Tribune Washington Bureau – TEHRAN — As the West has tightened its economic chokehold in an effort to force Iran’s government to scale back its growing
By Michael Muskal, Los Angeles Times – The devastating fire near Colorado Springs, Colo., continued to grow Thursday, even as the city began to assess the damage thus far; the threat to
By Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times – BEIRUT — Turkish troops and antiaircraft batteries were headed toward the tense Turkish-Syrian border region Thursday, Turkish media said, amid reports that special U.N.
By Don Lee, Tribune Washington Bureau – WASHINGTON — Since the automobile was popularized in the 1920s, America’s suburbs have been growing faster than cities as people fled urban life for quieter,
By Alex Kane Rudansky, McClatchy Newspapers – WASHINGTON — When James Wilson enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps 65 years ago, he didn’t know he was making history by becoming one of
By Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times – BEIRUT — With a new warning that strife-torn Syria confronts a “catastrophic” fate, the United Nations said Wednesday it will convene an emergency session
By Jenny Deam and John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times – COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Marking the worst fire season in Colorado history, three major blazes are burning uncontrolled throughout the Rocky
By Michael Muskal, Los Angeles Times – High winds continued to whip through the Colorado Springs area on Wednesday, fanning the flames of the Waldo Canyon fire and more than doubling the
Participating customers north of I-80 included in event CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – June 27, 2012 – Interstate Power and Light Co. (IPL), an Alliant Energy company, announced today it will cycle air
By Diana Marcum, Los Angeles Times – STOCKTON, Calif. — This Gold Rush-era port city, an epicenter of California’s agricultural exports, will become the nation’s largest city to seek protection under U.S.
James Q. Lynch, CR Gazette – A Greenfield couple has won approval from the Iowa Department of Transportation to gather orders for a license plate featuring a red, white and blue image
By Eryn Brown, Los Angeles Times – LOS ANGELES—A calorie is a calorie is a calorie — or is it? Maybe not, a small study has found. Once the pounds are shed,
By Brian Crecente, McClatchy-Tribune News Service – The USS Iowa is one of the last of a dying breed; a ship of the line, a dreadnought designed to power up alongside an enemy
By Roy Gutman, McClatchy Newspapers – ISTANBUL — With the backing of the NATO alliance, which unanimously condemned Syria for shooting down an unarmed Turkish reconnaissance plane last week, Turkey warned Tuesday that
By Henry Pierson Curtis, The Orlando Sentinel – ORLANDO, Fla. — John Gross remembers frantically trying to scoop up his grandfather’s ashes and wondering why the Orlando TSA agent who spilled them was
By Carol Rosenberg, McClatchy Newspapers – GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — A native New Yorker who came up in the military as a Navy helicopter pilot took charge of the prison camps
By Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times – The Supreme Court’s decision Monday on Arizona’s tough immigration law gave both sides an opportunity to celebrate, criticize and, inevitably, point fingers. Above all, it
By Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times – BEIRUT — Turkey hinted that it would ask its NATO allies to consider Syria’s downing of a Turkish jet to be an attack on the
By Juan O. Tamayo, McClatchy Newspapers – MIAMI — The U.S. State Department is increasing funding for the technology side of its Cuba democracy programs in hopes of expanding the flow of uncensored