With a deadline looming just before midnight Thursday, the United Auto Workers union and Detroit’s three automakers remain far apart in contract talks and the union is preparing to strike.

The union is demanding a 35% boost in pay and the automakers, General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, formerly Fiat Chrysler, have countered with offers that are roughly half of that increase.

In an online address to members late Wednesday, union President Shawn Fain said the automakers have raised initial wage offers, but have rejected some of the union’s other demands.

If there’s no deal by the end of Thursday, union officials will not bargain on Friday and instead will join workers on picket lines, he said.

All three companies’ offers on cost-of-living adjustments were deficient, Fain said, providing little or no protection against inflation.

A northern Iowa police officer was shot Wednesday night, prompting a manhunt that ended with an arrest in Minnesota.

The Iowa State Patrol said the officer was shot around 8 p.m. in Algona, a town of about 5,300 residents. The 43-year-old suspect fled, prompting a Blue Alert to let the public know a suspect who posed a potential threat to law enforcement was on the loose.

KCCI-TV reported that the suspect was captured just before midnight and taken into custody in Brown County, Minnesota, according to a news release from the sheriff.

More than three years after it was stolen from a museum that was shut to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, a painting by Dutch master Vincent van Gogh has been recovered, a little worse for wear, the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands said Tuesday.

Van Gogh’s “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring,” which was painted in 1884, was snatched in an overnight raid in March 2020 from The Singer Laren museum east of Amsterdam. It was there on loan from the Groninger Museum.

“The Groninger Museum is extremely happy and relieved that the work is back,” its director, Andreas Blühm, said in a statement. “We are very grateful to everyone who contributed to this good outcome.”

It said “the painting has suffered, but is – at first glance – still in good condition.” The work will be scientifically examined in the coming months. It’s being kept temporarily at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Eli Bieker can be reached at biek1966@stthomas.edu.

Gwynn Vang can be reached at vang5129@stthomas.edu.