Governor Chet Culver announced this week that swine flu had hit the state of Iowa, with three probable cases of the H1N1 influenza virus found in Marshall, Des Moines, and Clinton counties.

"I want to be clear," Culver said. "Now is the time to continue our diligence and to exercise caution. There is no need for alarm."

Culver said he has instructed Public Health Director Tom Newton to prepare a declaration for a public-health disaster in Iowa if the cases are confirmed. This would allow the state to receive additional anti-virals, deploy public-health response teams, adopt measures to prevent transmission of the disease, and provide for possible isolation of individuals or groups to protect the public.

The disease is not transmitted by food, Culver added. "Our swine herds in Iowa are healthy," Culver said. "We have not had any reports or concerns about the swine herds. You simply cannot catch this flu by eating pork. Rather this is a new type of influenza and as such is airborne and spread by human contact."

Newton said so far 150 specimens have been sent in from around the state to be analyzed for the H1N1 virus. Of those, 40 have been tested, 110 remain to be tested, and two are likely swine flu.

President Barack Obama used a visit to Iowa on Earth Day to announce that his administration is establishing a program to authorize for the first time the leasing of federal waters for projects to generate electricity from wind as well as from ocean currents and other renewable sources.

"This will open the door to major investments in offshore clean energy," Obama said. "For example, there is enormous interest in wind projects off the coasts of New Jersey and Delaware, and today's announcement will enable these projects to move forward."

The program being established through the U.S. Department of Interior will develop the renewable-energy projects on the waters of the Outer Continental Shelf that produce electricity from wind, wave, and ocean currents. These regulations will enable the nation to tap into the ocean's sustainable resources to generate clean energy.

In a three-hour visit Wednesday, Obama toured and then spoke to an invitation-only crowd of about 200 at Trinity Structural Towers in Newton, the former Maytag appliance factory that now houses a green manufacturing facility producing towers for wind-energy production and employing dozens of former Maytag employees.

Iowa lawmakers are focusing on budget, bonding, federal deductibility and sex offender legislation as the Legislature works to adjourn the 2009 session next week, but other bills such as one that would increase Iowa's compulsory school attendance age from 16 to 17 is a "long shot" at this point, Democratic legislative leaders said Thursday.

Hundreds of opponents and supporters of the Iowa Supreme Court's Varnum v. Brien decision legalizing same-sex marriage descended Thursday on the Iowa Capitol and watched as House Speaker Pat Murphy declined twice to call up a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a legal union between a man and a woman.

"Let us vote! Let us vote! Let us vote!" supporters of the Iowa Marriage Amendment shouted after the first attempt to bring the issue to the House floor was ruled out of order.

Advocates on both sides of the issue watched at about 9:30 a.m. as House Minority Leader Kraig Paulsen made an attempt to bring House Joint Resolution 6 to the House floor.

In a unanimous decision, the Iowa Supreme Court on Friday upheld a district-court decision legalizing same-sex marriages, giving Iowa three weeks before it joins Massachusetts and Connecticut as the only states in the nation that allow gays and lesbians to marry. Vermont could also soon replace its first-in-the-nation civil-unions law with one that allows same-sex marriage beginning in September.

"We are firmly convinced the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further any important governmental objective," the opinion stated. "The legislature has excluded a historically disfavored class of people from a supremely important civil institution without a constitutionally sufficient justification."

The case in question, Varnum v. Brien, was filed in December 2005 by Lambda Legal on behalf of six same-sex couples who sought to marry in Iowa. The lawsuit argues that constitutional rights to equal protection and due process make it unlawful to bar same-sex couples from marrying. A Polk County District Court judge in August 2007 ruled that it is unconstitutional to deny same-sex couples access to marriage; the Iowa Supreme Court upheld that ruling Friday.