The refrain has gotten pretty old, to the point that most people react with indifference. Crime is down. Crime falls even more. Crime drops again. That's true nationwide, in Illinois and Iowa, and in the Quad Cities.

The Iowa Supreme Court has overturned a nearly $17 million award against BRK Brands, Incorporated, manufacturers of the First Alert smoke alarms, in a case involving the death of a three-year-old Davenport boy. Nathan and Jennifer Mercer had sued BRK Brands, claiming the BRK model 83R ionization smoke detector was defective and failed to go off in time when a fire, sparked by a faulty baby monitor, killed their three-year-old boy Bradley and severely burned their 18-month-old son Travis in January 1993.

U.S. Representative Jim Leach (R-IA) is the sponsor of bill HR 3886, the International Counter-Money Laundering and Foreign Anti-Corruption Act of 2000. Despite the title, one provision gives U.S. Treasury officials the specific power to impose "Know Your Customer-style regulations on U.

Carol Allred was ahead of her time. In the late 1970s, as a high-school teacher in Idaho, she decided to try to integrate something new into her English and psychology classes. "I kept thinking there were things we were not teaching," she said.