COUNCIL BLUFFS, IA – James Matthew Hargens, age 37, of Council Bluffs, was sentenced on December 15, 2022, to 121 months in prison following his plea of guilty to Receipt of Child Pornography. Hargens will be required to register as a sex offender and serve five years of supervised release following his release from prison. Hargens was also ordered to pay restitution.

In November 2021 a social media application sent a cybertip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children regarding an account that uploaded several images and videos of child pornography. The cybertip was referred to Iowa Internet Crimes Against Children and the Council Bluffs Police Department initiated an investigation. The investigation led to a search warrant at Hargens residence. A forensic analysis identified that Hargens received, possessed, and downloaded numerous images and videos of child pornography.

United States Attorney Richard D. Westphal of the Southern District of Iowa made the announcement. The investigation was conducted by the Council Bluffs Police Department, the United States Secret Service National Computer Forensics Institute who provided training and equipment and was prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa.

(Radio Iowa) – A man from the East Coast is now charged with leaving his dog tied up in freezing weather outside the Des Moines International Airport. An airport worker found the one-year-old brown and white female dog leashed to a pole outside the airport on December 29th with no food, water or protection from the frigid temperatures. Des Moines police say the dog most certainly would have died.

Reports say the owner, identified as 24-year-old Charles Bigsen of Newark, New Jersey, didn’t have the proper kennel for the dog, and left it so he could board a cross-country flight. Police are charging Bigsen with animal abandonment and animal neglect. The Animal Rescue League of Iowa says once the dog, which they’ve named Allie, is spayed and micro-chipped, it’ll be placed up for adoption.

(Radio Iowa) – The first Iowan to reach orbit has died. Astronaut Walter Cunningham was born in Creston and said in a recent interview that he grew up poor, dreaming of flying airplanes, not spacecraft, though he went on to do both. Cunningham enlisted in the U-S Navy in 1951 and later became a Marine Corps pilot, serving in Korea. After getting a doctorate in physics, Cunningham became an astronaut and in 1968, was the lunar module pilot on the Apollo 7 crew. They spent 11 days in space and paved the way for the moon landing the following year. Cunningham died Tuesday in Houston at age 90.

Walter Cunningham (NASA Photo)

(Guthrie Center, Iowa; Article submitted) – The Guthrie County SESS Range Finders 4-H club held their annual awards night on Sunday, December 4 at the Guthrie Fairgrounds Events Center. Huge thank you to the Guthrie Fair Board for allowing us to use their facility! All club member families were invited to attend this event and we had 11 members present. The evening started off with a potluck dinner with some amazing food. Next, we inducted our new 2022-2023 club officers of: President Emma Rutledge, Vice President Michelle Brooks, Secretary Kaylee Oberholtz, Treasurer Max Owen, Reporter Corrie Knapp, Photographer Piper Downing, Historian Gracie Hodges. It was then time to have our new officers run the monthly meeting. We welcomed our new club members of Dalton Carney, Payson Downing, and Ian Griffith. We ended the night with our club award presentation from the 2021-2022 4-H year.

Emma Rutledge, President, started off with recognizing and thanking SESS volunteers with year of service pins.

Left to right in front row: Max Owen, Alala Derry, Payton Downing, Ian Griffith, Corrie Knapp
From left to right in back row: Trever Derry, Aries Derry, Emma Rutledge, Kaylee Oberholtz, Michelle Brooks, Piper Downing (Photo submitted)

The instructors then took turns reading and handing out club awards. SESS awards recognize the following: Officers, Committee Participation, Club Presentations, Club Tour Participation, County Fair Participation, Community Service Event Participation, Discipline Safety Awards, Postal Shoot Participation, State Shoot Participation, Nationals Participation of Eli Madsen and Max Owen, Graduation, Perfect Attendance of Trever Derry and Max Owen, and most importantly our Member Excellence Award. Although all SESS awards are an honor, the Member Excellence is our highest award and the following members received it: Trever Derry, Corrie Knapp, Jalen Michaelson, Kaylee Oberholtz, Max Owen, and Emma Rutledge.

(Submitted by Corrie Knapp, Reporter)

(Shelby, Iowa)  – The Carstens 1880 Farmstead, Inc. will hold its annual meeting on Tuesday, January 10, 2023 at the Shelby Community Hall in Shelby at 7:30 pm. Board President Charlie Leaders, of Minden, says “We encourage everyone to come out and hear about what’s happening at the farm.” Members of Carstens Farm will be voting for four positions on the board of directors. The following board members’ terms are ending as of the date of the meeting:  Charlie Leaders and Ben Ausdemore of Minden, Stanley Kern of Shelby and Rick Newland of Portsmouth. All four are running for another term.

Continuing board members are Gerald McCool and David Dittmer of Minden, Dale Schroder of Avoca, Bill Johnson and Doug Martin of Shelby, Harvey Ferris of Missouri Valley and Terry Torneten of Harlan. Results of the election will be announced following the meeting.

Leaders said “We are listing ideas for projects in 2023. We want to continue our focus on building upkeep and repair.” Reports will be given on the 2022 Carstens Farm Days show. Leaders said also, “I hope to see many members as well as the general public at the meeting because we want to continue to grow our membership.”

Carstens 1880 Farmstead, Inc. members as well as members of the public are welcome and encouraged to attend.  Those attending will have the opportunity to renew their memberships or to purchase new memberships.  Memberships are important for sustaining the farm’s operations. New or renewing members should note that membership rates remain the same as last year: $25 for family; $15 for an individual. Visit the farm’s website for membership information.

Carstens 1880 Farmstead, Inc., a non-profit group of local volunteers, oversees this working farmstead museum exhibit located south of Shelby, Iowa.  The farmstead hosts several thousand people annually during Carstens Farm Days which is held the first weekend after Labor Day.  For more information visit www.carstensfarm.com

(Creston, Iowa) – Officials with the Creston Police Department report two Creston men were arrested on separate assault charges, Tuesday night. Authorities say 25-year-old Brandon Lucas Jones was arrested at his residence in the 500 block of N. Chestnut Street, in Creston, for Domestic Abuse Assault/1st offense. And, 40-year-old Cody Lee Witt was arrested at his residence in the 600 block of N. Poplar Street, in Creston, also for Domestic Abuse Assault/1st offense.

Both men were transported to the Union County Jail and held without bond pending an appearance before the Magistrate.

(Guthrie Center, Iowa) – The Guthrie County Sheriff’s Office reports there were no serious injuries following two separate, recent single-vehicle accidents. Authorities say a car driven by 38-year-old Jarrod D. Majors, of Jefferson, hit a patch of ice and left Wagon Road at around 2:50-a.m., Tuesday. The car entered the ditch and rolled over. Majors complained of pain or possible injury. He was checked-out by Medics and cleared. The Sheriff’s Office said there had been heavy rain and freezing in the area, which likely contributed to the crash. Damage to Majors’ 2015 Chevy Impala was estimated at $20,000 (A total loss).

The other accident in Guthrie County happened at around 6:10-p.m. on Dec. 28th. Authorities say a 2015 Ford Fusion driven by 79-year-old John H. Thomas, of Coon Rapids, was traveling north on Chestnut Road, when Thomas swerved to avoid a deer on the road. The car went out of control and into the ditch, where it struck a tree stump and came to rest. Damage was estimated at $8,000.

(Radio Iowa) – A new study finds more than 45-percent of seriously injured drivers in Iowa had at least one drug in their system. Tim Brown is the director of Drugged Driving Research at the National Advanced Driving Simulator at the University of Iowa. Brown says the study will help better direct messaging to prevent people from driving impaired, but it shows all drivers should be aware of other motorists around them. “Your best bet is to be defensive and be aware of what else is going on,” Brown says. “If you see a vehicle that’s behaving oddly, you want to give it space and you don’t want to be in that zone around it if something bad happens.”

The top drugs found in Iowa drivers were alcohol and cannabinoids — from products that come from cannabis plants. Brown says one alarming trend revealed in the study was the increase in prescription drugs found. “Many, many medications out there do great things for treating disease states,” Brown says, “but they’re not safe to drive with and I think people just forget that.”

The study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration screened people involved in traffic crashes for drugs at seven Level One trauma centers nationally, including the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. It tested seriously injured drivers for drugs from August 2020 to July 2021.

(reporting by Natalie Krebs, Iowa Public Radio)

(Radio Iowa) – Businesses have had to do some adjusting with increased costs and the continued tight labor market. The C-E-O of the Ankeny-based Casey’s convenience stores, Darren Rebellez, says they decided to focus on employee turnover. “What we’ve done is we’ve found some ways through a number of different tactics of just making the job of running our stores a little simpler,” he says, “and at the same time focus on some things that employees were telling us that they want to see.” Rebellez said during his recent quarterly report, that focus has led to the highest employee engagement scores they’ve ever had as a company.

“so what that’s done is it’s reduced our turnover. And so we’ve seen sequential improvement in turnover every single month this year. And as a result of that, our overtime hours are down and our training hours are down,” Rebellez said. So our overtime in the second quarter was down about 22 percent. And our training hours are down 25 percent.” He said that allowed then to avoid cutting back store hours due to a lack of staff.

“We were able to maintain the hours of operating the store and just operating it more effectively. And at the same time pull out what I call those non-productive hours that we were spending on on overtime and on incremental training because we were turning over people so much,” he said. Rebellez made his comments during the recent investor update.

(Radio Iowa) – December is traditionally a very busy, profitable month for retailers, but the latest economic survey for Iowa and eight other Midwestern states shows another dip in the business barometer for the final month of 2022. Creighton University economist Ernie Goss says the state and regional economies fell further below growth neutral, or 50 on the zero-to-100 scale, during December, pointing to higher recession risk for 2023.

“These are the lowest readings we’ve recorded since the pandemic, in other words, that’s May of 2020,” Goss says. “So, things are not looking good. The economy is very likely to slow down significantly in the first half of 2023 and certainly the second half of 2023, so it was not a good signal.” Arkansas, Missouri, Nebraska and South Dakota are all seeing employment levels now that exceed pre-pandemic levels, but the survey shows Iowa has yet to hit that mark. Goss says the region is still lagging several thousand jobs, but hiring numbers did rise during December.

“Companies are still hiring. Job additions, employment additions are not, I won’t call it strong but it’s surprising the strength we’re seeing there when everything else is not good,” Goss says. “But when we asked about applicants for job openings in the company, 63% reported a shortage of applicants for any job openings they had.” The future outlook is far from glowing, Goss says, as the overall Business Conditions Index has fallen for seven of the past nine months. Plus, he says about 60-percent of supply managers surveyed expect the economy to slump into a recession in 2023.

“We’re talking about really the higher, higher probability of a recession,” Goss says. “I think the probability of a recession is now well above 50%. We’re going to see slow-to-no-to-negative growth. The housing sector’s already in a recession, manufacturing is likely to enter a minor recession.” According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Iowa’s current labor force participation rate is two percentage points lower than before the pandemic. Goss says that indicates more than 34-thousand Iowans remain out of the workforce, thus contributing to the state’s labor shortage.