By KEN MORITSUGU Associated Press BEIJING — The U.S. ambassador to China will step down early next month, ending a three-year tenure marked by a trade war and increasingly bitter relations between the world’s two largest economies. Terry Branstad, appointed by President Donald Trump in ...

SERGEANT BLUFF (AP) — Iowa authorities have revised the cause of death of a northwest Iowa man to “undetermined” after initially investigating the case as a homicide, the Iowa Department of Public Safety reported Monday. David Davenport, 66, died Oct. 25 of severe head trauma after ...

DES MOINES (AP) — A man who shot and killed one teenager and injured another in Des Moines on Monday will not be charged after authorities determined he was acting in self-defense, police announced. Police said two 16-year-old males who both had handguns tried to rob a group of people in ...

IOWA CITY (AP) — An Iowa judge has again sided with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and voided more than 90,000 absentee ballot requests in Johnson County. It’s the third county in Iowa to have the ballot request forms voided after Trump’s campaign and state and national ...

By DAVID PITT Associated Press Federal regulators on Monday handed a victory to corn farmers and the renewable fuels industry by refusing to allow a group of petroleum refiners in 14 states to forego requirements to blend ethanol into the gasoline they make. Members of Congress from farm ...

DES MOINES (AP) — Iowa officials said the number of coronavirus cases in the state increased by 814 Sunday and two additional deaths were reported. Health officials said that as of 10 a.m. Sunday 74,361 confirmed cases of coronavirus have been reported since the pandemic began. Of that ...

By DAVID PITT Associated Press Two state district court judges on Tuesday declined to halt enforcement of a state requirement for schools to return students to classrooms, denying the Des Moines and Iowa City school districts a legal avenue for educating students at home while the coronavirus ...

By GRANT SCHULTE Associated Press An Iowa teenager who died of starvation in 2017 could have been saved if state social workers and contractors had been more thorough when they investigated the girl’s living conditions, a state watchdog said Tuesday. The Iowa state ombudsman released its ...

DES MOINES (AP) — Hundreds of students from the Des Moines Public Schools and the Ames Community School District marched to the governor’s mansion Monday to protest the decision to suspend sports and start the school year online. The “Student March for Fairness” comes after the Iowa ...

ALTOONA (AP) — Altoona police shot and injured a man who they say was armed with a weapon Monday outside a motel in the suburbs outside of Des Moines. Police responding to a report of a suspicious person with a weapon went to Motel 6 around 8:33 a.m., the Des Moines Register ...

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri woman died after she was ejected from a golf cart, the Missouri State Highway Patrol said. Donna Young, 75, of Hollister was a passenger in an EZ Go Golf Cart that was traveling three miles south of Hollister on Saturday, The Springfield News-Leader ...

By SCOTT McFETRIDGE and JOSH FUNK Associated Press DES MOINES — As she inched ahead in her rusty Chevy pickup, Brianna Lordz bemoaned that engine problems had prevented her from making it to the last few drive-up produce giveaways organized by a Des Moines food pantry. But Lordz managed to ...

CLAYTON COUNTY (AP) — An Iowa man died following a two-vehicle car crash Saturday morning in Clayton County, Iowa. The Iowa State Patrol says 23-year-old Cedar Rapids resident Jasmyne Jones tried to pass 72-year-old Byron Meyer, of Postville, in his utility terrain vehicle, KIMT-TV reported. ...

LEON (AP) — A 3-year-old boy has died after driving a utility terrain vehicle into a parked trailer in southern Iowa. The boy had been riding in the UTV as a passenger with two relatives in Leon, The Des Moines Register reports. But the boy got into the driver’s seat after his two ...

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The rural economy in Middle America showed improvement in August, despite the effects of a global pandemic and a rare devastating wind storm earlier in the month, according to a monthly survey of nine Midwest and Plains states released Tuesday. The overall index for the ...

JOHNSTON (AP) — Authorities in central Iowa identified a 3-year-old boy who was fatally hit by a car in a Johnston apartment complex parking lot over the weekend. Clayton Lloyd was killed in the Sunday afternoon accident, police in the Des Moines suburb said. Officers and medics were ...

DES MOINES (AP) — The Federal Emergency Management Agency has approved help for residents of 10 more counties that were damaged by an August windstorm, the state announced Tuesday. Gov. Kim Reynolds said in a news release that FEMA now says individuals and business owners in Benton, Boone, ...

JEFFERSON, S.D. (AP) — Authorities have identified the person who died when an ambulance crashed on a South Dakota interstate. The Highway Patrol says 29-year-old Tonya Bruscher, from Brunsville, Iowa, was killed when the driver of the ambulance lost control of the vehicle on Interstate 29 ...

DES MOINES (AP) — Iowa continued to see significant transmission of the coronavirus on Tuesday with the state reporting more than 600 new cases and a federal report pegging Iowa with the nation’s highest rate of virus spread in the country. As of Tuesday morning, state health data shows ...

By JAMES MacPHERSON Associated Press BISMARCK, N.D. — The Army Corps of Engineers is recommending that the federal government negotiate a settlement with North Dakota for more than $38 million that the state spent policing protests against the Dakota Access oil pipeline. In a letter ...