The front page of Saturday's Cedar Rapids Gazette

On the heels of last Saturday’s Iowa Watch report, today’s  Gazette ran a nice editorial on the need for some level of consistency in the responses of police, media and universities when students go missing.

……………………….

— On Tue, 6/1/10, CIBC.Online.Request@cibc.com wrote:

From: CIBC.Online.Request@cibc.com
Subject: Your account is on restricted status !
To: booerns2005@yahoo.com
Date: Tuesday, June 1, 2010, 5:46 AM

[http://8f1.j.hasvik.com/securite/c.png]

…………………..

From: booerns2005@yahoo.com
Sent: 01 Jun 10 16:36:08
To:
Cc:
Subject: Re: Your account is on restricted status !

Your face is on restricted status.

………………..

Dear Sir or Madam,

Thank you for bringing this e-mail to our attention.

We can confirm that this e-mail was not sent by CIBC and is a form of e-mail fraud called “phishing”.

CIBC is taking the necessary steps to shut down the fraudulent site.

Phishing e-mails claiming to be from legitimate companies target wide distribution lists. CIBC does not divulge customers’ e-mail addresses. Therefore, the fact that you may be a CIBC customer and were targeted by a phishing e-mail claiming to be from CIBC is simply a coincidence.

CIBC does not send e-mails:

- asking the customer to provide, confirm or update personal records.
- sent from a third party address or link to a third party site.
- asking customers to disclose passwords, PIN#’s, or PVQs (Personal Verification Questions)
- containing no information about why a customer is receiving e-mail.
- requiring an urgent response.

To help protect customers against phishing and malicious software, CIBC now offers online fraud and identity theft protection software, free of charge. To find out more, please visit: http://www.cibc.com/ca/legal/trusteer-rapport.html

For additional recommendations that will help protect you when performing online transactions, please visit: www.cibc.com/ca/legal/what-you-can-do.html

If you are a CIBC customer who provided personal banking information through a link in an e-mail, please call CIBC Online Banking Support immediately at 1-888-872-2422. Assistance is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You will be asked for your Convenience Card number and other information to initiate an immediate investigation.

If you visited the fraudulent site, please clear your browser’s cache, then close it and reopen it before accessing CIBC Online Banking again.

We thank you for communicating with us so quickly and allowing us the opportunity to address the issue.

Thank you for visiting www.cibc.com.

Sincerely,

Moses
Internet Communications Specialist

=================================
Note From CIBC e-mail Postmaster:
For reasons of security and confidentiality, some information in your original communication may have been altered. This information is marked by X’s or .
=================================
This information is confidential and for the exclusive use of the person to whom it is addressed. If you are not the intended recipient, please advise us by e-mail and destroy or return to us any copies. CIBC accepts no liability for use by third parties or for errors or omissions.

TRACKING NUMBER: A00003352488-00010310224

—–Original Message—–

It's time for Bolkcom to pump up his tires and get back out on the road - this time in beautiful Slovenia. There, he will learn and discuss alternative energy.

From June 5 to 11, State Senator and CGRER Outreach and Community Education Director Joe Bolkcom will try to conserve his own energy while learning about energy efficiency in Europe, as he bikes with colleagues across Slovenia in this year’s Green Bike Tour.

“Climate change is real,” says Bolkcom. “People everywhere are responding.”

Bolkcom, a veteran of previous bike events, including a 2002 tour in Northern Europe, joins four Iowans – led by David Osterberg, executive director of the nonpartisan Iowa Policy Project – in peddling to renewable energy sites and meetings with public officials and scholars in several Slovenian cities.

The tour gives participants a chance to learn about world-leading innovation in Slovenia, while spreading the news about Iowa’s own advances in promoting wind and solar energy.

“Iowa should be proud of the progress we have made especially in wind power, but Europe is still a leader and we want to learn about the progress being made in Slovenia,” says Bolkcom.

Bicyclists on the tour ride with solar panels that power laptops that help send word back to the United States about their tour.

They begin at the University of Nova Gorica near the Slovenia’s western border with Italy, then head east to a solar plant at Ajdovscina.

Other tour stops include a solar plant at Ljubljana, a hydro/solar plant at Mavrice and a pumped storage power plant at Avce. Visits also include meetings with the Slovenia Government Office for Climate Change and local government officials.

Joining Bolkcom and Osterberg are:

• John Moreland of Des Moines, staff assistant for U.S. Senator Tom Harkin, caseworker on agriculture, rural development and the environment;
• Edward Woolsey of Prole, Iowa; owner and CEO of a small renewable energy business, Green Prairie Wind Energy LLC; and
• Professor Mladen Franko of Ljubljana, Slovenia, vice president for education at the University of Nova Gorica (UNG) in Slovenia, and professor in the UNG School of Environmental Sciences.

Click here or here for more information about the Green Bike Tour. And follow Bolkcom on his blog.

And read about the collaboration on Gazette editor Lyle Muller’s  blog. For the past few months, I’ve been blogging here about missing students. But thanks to Iowa Watch and the Gazette, I finally got the chance to put everything together.

CGRER co-director Greg Carmichael

On May 9, Greg Carmichael spoke in China to help clear the air – or at least improve its quality around the globe.

The CGRER co-director and UI professor of chemical and biochemical engineering addressed a slew of international leaders – including China’s vice premier and meteorological heads from over 30 countries – as the key speaker at the Honor Day for the MeteoWorld Pavilion at Expo 2010 in Shanghai.

The only non-governmental attendee, Carmichael spoke on “Chemical Weather — A Challenge and an Opportunity for Service Delivery and Risk Reduction.”

A view from the outside of MeteoWorld at Expo 2010 in Shanghai

Much of Carmichael’s work is reflected in MeteoWorld, a 1,500 square meter pavilion that aims to educate visitors about the prevention and mitigation of meteorological disasters, adaptation to climate change and advances in atmospheric science and technology. With its breathtaking cloud-like look and feel, hi-tech weather station, and realistic natural phenomenon simulations, it has drawn wide interest, ranking among the top 10 most popular expo pavilions.

Carmichael isn’t new to the scene in China. For three years he has worked with Chinese authorities to develop an early warning system for air quality problems and heat waves that is currently used at Expo 2010.

He is also chair of the Scientific Advisory group for the World Meteorological Organization’s GURME Project, which aims to stem urban pollution, and chair of the scientific advisory group for the Shanghai Expo pilot project on air quality forecasting.

Literature, art, football and partying – Iowa City is a leader in slew of categories. But soon the jewel of the Midwest could claim another title – the nation’s center of flood research.

Researchers at the UI’s Iowa Flood Center, birthed after the devastation of the 2008 floods, hope to put the city on the map for its ability to develop some potentially lifesaving maps of its own. And success in this latest project could bring a national flood center to Iowa City.

While the federal government has designated centers for research disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes, it has yet to do so for flooding.

The center is now working with the state Department of Natural Resources to create highly detailed maps that could provide Iowans, and eventually many more Americans, with precise data that could help them stay dry during flood season.

In its last session, the state legislature doled out $10 million to the center, assigning it a large role in the $15 million project to develop more precise flood inundation maps using light detecting and ranging technology (LiDAR).

The project should perk the interest of Iowans who prefer to spend their summer time sipping coronas and soaking up rays instead of sandbagging and scrambling to save their Star Wars memorabilia.

We can’t prevent future floods, but we can work to prepare for them, flood experts say.

Nathan Young, lead researcher on the center’s end of the project, says the project aims to provide precise data that will help “eliminate the spectrum of risk” in the floodplain, as the current method for determining flows “is not realistic” and has fallen under scrutiny.

“[The project] will communicate flood information to the public,” he said. This will give lawmakers more information to form policy and leading to better management of property in floodplains.

That information is sorely needed, especially after the Iowa legislature turned down a range of proposals that aimed to stem damage to the cityscape caused by future flooding. While the setback disappointed flood researchers and other enemies of sogginess, some remain optimistic about the future.

Larry Weber

“The legislature saw the Flood Center as an investment in Iowa in allocating two-thirds of [project’s] funding to it,” said Larry Weber, director of IIHR-Hydroscience and Engineering at the university. Weber added that improved certainty of forecasts with new technology may coax legislators to more closely consider floodplain legislation in their next session.

Floodplain mapping efforts have been carried out disjointedly in communities throughout the country, Weber said. But after completing a successful test run in Poweshiek County, the team plans to map each of Iowa’s other 98 counties and develop a model that other flood-prone states – like Tennessee, still reeling from recent floods that killed 21 – can copy.

This project, along with its other forecasting efforts, has helped the center garner serious attention from local and national news outlets.

“The work that we did in the first 7 to 8 months of the center had a very positive return,” he said. “It further moved us toward our work in bringing a national flood center to Iowa.”

Weber identified North Carolina’s flood mapping program as the nation’s current best. But the Iowa center plans to eclipse the Tar Heel technology and offer more services, including improved forecasting and economic analysis. Most recently, it has received recognition for its development of underwater censors to measure river levels.

“We will be North Carolina and more,” Weber said.

Researchers also feel positive about the flood center’s relationship with the DNR. Weber described it as “outstanding.” DNR director Richard Leopold echoed Weber’s sentiment.

Richard Leopold

“I think it’s been a very collaborative relationship…it’s really refreshing,” he said. “We’ve been working hard to have the proper information to make good decisions.”

Leopold said Iowans should make sure to remember the hardship of 2008.

“We have such a short memory. The rivers can’t be strangled…but we can’t forget about the past if we’re going to have long-term success,” he said.

Remembering the past and embracing Iowa City’s central role in the world of flood research might just keep us above water the next time Mother Nature hits us with her best shot.

An elevator fire rages in Lisbon. --photo by Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette

CEDAR RAPIDS – What a rough start. Cedar Rapids’ new fire chief, Stephen Reid, was sworn in on a day in which two blazes – at least one of which was fatal – have raged in the area.

Early this morning, Rodney Noye, 35, was found dead after a fire started inside his second-story apartment at 901 Oakland Rd. NE. And now, fire crews are trying to extinguish the huge flames engulfing Wilkin Elevator in the adjacent town of Lisbon.

I’m sensing a theme on the front page of tomorrow’s Gazette.

Hitting well above  .400 this season, Greg has garnered attention from major league scouts and helped lead Grinnell to a 12-0 conference record and its first outright conference championship since 2001.

Malewitz, seen here with beautiful girlfriend Katherine McMullen, will get one last chance to relive the glory days. He will come up short, but he'll be firing.

One year removed from weakly gounding out in his last collegiate at bat, unheralded and scoliosed Division III catcher-turned journalist Jim Malewitz still has nothing to prove. Really, he doesn’t.

But for one day this summer, he will put down his notebook, pick up a bat and pretend that he does.

He and star German baseball Spieler and fellow journalist, Christoph May, will futily try out for the  Detroit Tigers.

May, a native of Bad Hersfeld, Germany, looks to give Americans a clinic on their own pastime.

On June 23,  Malewitz and May will ditch the cornfields of Iowa for one last day in the sun, in the unedited, un-filmed and anticlimactic drama, “Post Script: For the hell of it.”

Will they injure their pride? Most likely. But they will certainly live to blog about it.

*This real life drama has been rated PG for mild bilingual swears and significant bromance.