The Fremont County Sheriff’s Dept. reports the arrest on Thursday of a Hamburg man on Burglary, theft and drug charges. 36-year old Daniel Scott Gubser, of Hamburg, faces a Burglary in the 3rd degree, Theft in the 2nd degree, Possession of Methamphetamine, Possession of Marijuana and Possession of Drug Paraphernalia, charges.

Also arrested last week in Fremont County, was 42-year old Bret Phillip Samuelson, of Newton, who was charged with Driving Under Suspension, and 20-year old Colton Frank Sederburg, of Montrose, CO., who was taken into custody for Revocation of Probation.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) – Another University of Iowa student has reported a sexual assault. The Iowa City Press-Citizen reports) that the student told university staffers on Thursday that she was assaulted at an off-campus fraternity house on Feb. 15th.

On Friday the university police issued a “timely warning” about the attack. It was the ninth such warning issued by UI police since August. The warnings are issued as part of the university’s compliance with federal Clery Act, which requires colleges to keep and report statistics on crimes in and around campus.

The woman has asked police to not investigate the sexual assault.

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) – Scam calls are being made to some Sioux City residents in an effort to scare them into paying ‘fines.”  Sioux City police say the caller tells the person that he or she has missed jury duty and must pay a fine of $450 or face arrest.  The caller doesn’t say what agency he represents. The caller is described as very persistent and is someone who speaks with a strong Southern accent. There may be more than one caller involved.

Officials said in a news release that the Sioux City Police Department and Woodbury County Sheriff’s Office “never call citizens and solicit for money owed over the phone, and we warn people to not become victimized to these crimes.”

DES MOINES, Iowa – Affordable housing can be key to helping working families gain and keep financial stability, but for many across Iowa the costs of rent and utilities are taking more than their share of the monthly budget.

The Center for Enterprise Development analyzed the latest data, and senior research manager Kasey Wiedrich said they found that nearly half of renters in the state are what’s called “housing cost-burdened.” “In Iowa it’s almost 45 percent of renters are spending more than 30 percent of their income on their housing costs,” she said. For homeowners in the state, the rate is significantly lower, with about 22 percent considered housing cost-burdened.

Wiedrich said the high cost of housing doesn’t allow for families on the edge to save for emergencies, a factor that is a major contributor to the “liquid-asset poverty rate.” In Iowa, that rate is 26 percent. “With liquid asset poverty,” she said, “we’re looking at the rate of households that don’t have enough liquid savings – cash in the bank, savings accounts, even retirement accounts that people could fairly easily tap into – so that they could make it for three months at the poverty level if their income went away.”

The group’s latest “Assets and Opportunities Scorecard” also shows how Iowa is faring in areas such as jobs, health care and education. The scorecard is online at assetsandopportunity.org.

(Iowa News Service)

A popular subscription service many Iowans use to watch movies and T-V shows on-demand or on D-V-D is collecting a wealth of data about our viewing habits, according to a University of Iowa researcher. Tim Havens, a U-of-I communication studies professor, says he’s been studying Netflix for months and he finds it remarkable how much information the service is amassing. “They do know an awful lot about us,” Havens says. “They know, not just what we watch and how we rate it, but they know when we pause, they know how long we pause, they know when we rewind and watch things over and over and collect all of that data. It’s really important to realize you’re being surveilled while you watch Netflix.”

Unlike the familiar Nielson ratings for broadcast television, Netflix doesn’t make any of its ratings public. Havens says some of that data is being used to make original programming available only to Netflix subscribers, like “House of Cards” or “Orange is the New Black.” Still, he has concerns about how the numbers are crunched, since they’re kept private. “When they run these algorithms that say ‘House of Cards’ is a good series to put on, who are they actually looking at? I don’t think they’re looking at all of their viewers,” Havens says. “Are they screening out certain viewers who they know, for instance, might be black, and they’re not interested in reaching black viewers so they focus primarily on 18-to-34-year-old men because they know those are the people who spend the most money.”

Havens says the policies of Netflix are troubling as he sees the “potential for a Big Brother scenario” to develop. Still, the way that data is mined and used is considered a benefit to many subscribers, as Netflix can recommend other movies and T-V shows you like, based on how you rate what you’ve watched. Havens says those recommendations are proving to be right about 90-percent of the time. Havens says, “If we watch a film on Netflix and we rate it in a particular way, that tells them a certain amount about what we think, but if we pause it, if we rewind, if we watch half of it and then stop, that’s really important data for them to have so they can recommend to another person who they think has similar viewing habits whether they may or may not like the film.”

Netflix will sometimes release an entire season of a new program all at once, leading to what some people call “binge-watching,” where they’ll spend a whole weekend doing little else but burning through all of those episodes. Havens says he prefers the term “marathon viewing,” which he says isn’t really a new phenomenon.  “If you think about cable and even in the broadcast era, there have always been these marathons,” Havens says. “So all of these channels have run marathons for years. In a sense, it’s sort of the same idea. The difference is, the audience actually gets to choose when they want to watch all of those episodes.”

Havens, by the way, is not a Netflix subscriber.

(Radio Iowa)

Sheriff’s officials in Montgomery County say a Pottawattamie County man was arrested Sunday night. 30-year old Gordon Leroy Currin III, of Council Bluffs, was taken into custody at around 7:30-p.m. for Driving While Revoked for a drug-related charge. Currin was booked into the Montgomery County Jail and held on $300 bond pending at court appearance.