Ryan’s visit to western Iowa happened a little more than two weeks before the Nov. 6 election. The presidential campaign is focusing on Iowa and eight other battleground states.

___

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Once-a-decade redistricting has created four competitive congressional races that pit two incumbents against one another and give a 10-year House veteran his toughest challenge yet.

Iowa lost one district because the state didn’t grow as quickly as others, making redistricting especially disruptive. It prompted nine-term Republican Rep. Tom Latham to move into the 3rd district to avoid running against GOP Rep. Steve King, and in the 2nd district, Democratic Rep. Dave Loebsack moved to avoid opposing Democrat Bruce Braley.

The result is a race between Latham and eight-term Democratic Rep. Leonard Boswell and a situation in which all the congressional candidates are running in districts markedly different than two years ago.

For King, there’s the additional challenge of running for the first time against a well-funded and known Democrat, Christie Vilsack. King has acknowledged that the race against Vilsack, the wife of former Iowa governor and now U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, has been his toughest since being elected in 2002.

___

1st CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT

The 1st district race is a rematch of the 2010 contest, with the incumbent Braley facing Republican lawyer Ben Lange.

___

DUBUQUE, Iowa (AP) — Police are investigating a shooting in Dubuque, Iowa that left one teen dead and another injured.

The shooting happened around 11:50 p.m. Saturday.

Dubuque police say officers found two wounded teen boys when they responded to the report of the shooting.

Both teens were taken to hospitals for treatment. Officials say 15-year-old Marlon Barber died while in surgery.

The other teen, 16-year-old Demarcus Timmons, is expected to survive.

Police say Barber and Timmons were with a group of friends before the shooting when they encountered another group of people. One group fired at the other as they left the same home.

___

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (AP) — Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan no doubt understands how sensitive people can be to talk of politics. At a campaign stop Iowa on Saturday, he learned the same is true of football.

Ryan was addressing a crowd of more than 500 in the parking lot of an outdoor outfitter store in Council Bluffs, just across the Missouri River from Omaha, Neb., when he spotted several people sporting Nebraska football shirts and hats.

He congratulated the Cornhuskers on the team’s 29-28 win over Northwestern the day before, drawing some cheers.

But he then said, “Iowa State’s having a great year, and the Cornhuskers are — are great, too.”

The awkward pause elicited nervous laughter from the crowd.

Nebraska is 5-and-2 this season.

___

MARION, Iowa (AP) — Most of what’s known about moths in Iowa has been discovered by two Cedar Rapids-area citizen scientists.

Working together for more than 15 years, Frank Olsen of Cedar Rapids and Jim Durbin of Marion — neither of whom has formal degrees related to their endeavor — have collected and identified representatives of more than 1,800 Iowa-dwelling moth species.

“If I had known at the beginning how many moth species live in Iowa, I never would have started,” said Olsen, 66, whose interest in moths preceded Durbin’s by a few years.

Durbin, 66, said the standard wisdom in the mid-1990s was that there are about 10 times as many moth species as butterfly species in Iowa. Given that fewer than 120 butterfly species had been identified in the state, “We thought, ‘1,200 species and we’re done,’ ” Durbin said.

The self-taught lepidopterists blew by that milestone several years ago and now believe that Iowa is home to at least 2,500 moth species.

They have been identifying about 100 new species per year but expect the rate to decline as they get closer to their goal.

“The longer you look, the smaller they get,” said Durbin, referring to the fact that they have identified all the large, distinctive species and are now down to rarer, nondescript species, many of which are no longer than an eighth of an inch.