(Radio Iowa) – Iowans are being warned about online criminals who are threatening to expose people’s alleged shady internet habits. Lisa Schiller, at the Better Business Bureau, says they’re tracking a type of “sextortion” blackmail scam where con artists will claim they have evidence of you watching porn. “They’ll say they gained access to all of the websites that you visited,” she says, “and then they threaten to send embarrassing images or videos to your contacts, your family, friends, coworkers, if, of course, payment is not made.”

Image from FBI.gov

Schiller says these scams can be effective because no one wants to talk about this, much less if they’ve fallen for it. She says the crooks want to spook people into sending money immediately. “Scammers will contact somebody, anybody, whether or not they visited a pornographic site or sent any explicit photos anywhere,” she says, “and they’ll claim that they hacked your computer, they activated your webcam and recorded you.”

Schiller says this tracks along with other scams like the I-R-S or warrant scams, where callers try to scare you into immediate action. If you get one of these calls, she says to simply hang up.

(Des Moines, Iowa) – The number of deaths by suicide in Iowa decreased in 2023 for the first time, significantly, in almost 10 years, according to updated data from the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services, which also showed an increase in teen suicide rates. The data, as part of the Iowa Public Health Tracking Portal, also showed immunization rates, statistics around births and deaths in the state, rates of sexually transmitted infections and the top baby names for 2023. The Iowa Capital Dispatch says the portal is a centralized hub for public health data throughout the state. The majority of statistics monitored are Nationally Consistent Data Measures, which are set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and make it possible to compare data from state to state. The data visualizations are regularly updated with new figures as the department processes the information.

Below are some of the updates to the portal from fall 2024:

Immunization records

The percentage of the population who received a flu vaccination has declined since 2020 for Iowans under 65. However, 64% of Iowans over the age of 65 received a flu vaccine in the 2023-2024 flu season, up significantly from the 2021-2022 year when just 41% of that age group received a flu shot.

The Iowa Public Health Tracking Portal has updated data visualizations on flu immunization rates in the state and by county. (Graphic courtesy of Iowa Department of Health and Human Services)

Nearly 34% of all Iowans, regardless of age, received a flu vaccine in the 2023-2024 flu season. Less than 16% of Iowans received a COVID-19 vaccine in the 2023-2024 flu season, with the majority of immunized Iowans residing in urban areas like Polk or Johnson counties.

Vital records

Maternal and paternal ages have increased steadily since 2006, with the average age for Iowa mothers, or parent A, at 29, and fathers, or parent B, at 31 in 2023. Nearly 100 more males than females were born in Iowa in 2023. Live birth and death rates have remained stable over the past 20 years in Iowa.

The percent of premature births remained the same from 2022 to 2023, but has increased 1.6% since 2000. And overall, there were 36,505 babies born in Iowa in 2023, about 1,000 fewer babies than were born in 2019, according to the department.

Heart disease was the number one cause of death in Iowa, followed by cancer in 2023. Cancer as a cause of death has decreased slightly from 2013, while the rate of death from diseases of the heart has stayed around the same, at about 18 per 10,000 people.

Other leading causes of death for 2023, and over the past 20 years, include cerebrovascular diseases (including stroke), chronic lower respiratory diseases and unintentional injuries, including transportation accidents and natural disasters. The 2023 data also show men were reported dying from most of these causes at higher rates than women.

Death by suicide went down in Iowa in 2023, to fewer than 500, for the first time since 2018. The number peaked in 2022, with nearly 600 reported deaths by suicide in Iowa. The teenage suicide rate for the state, however, increased from 3.1% in 2022 to 5.2% in 2023. County specific data is also available on the state data portal, which shows teens die by suicide at higher rates in Polk County than the state as a whole.

Sexually transmitted infections: The fall data update also included 2023 cases of gonorrhea, chlamydia and syphilis in the state. Chlamydia is the most common out of the three, though cases declined from 2022 by about 1,000. Gonorrhea cases have similarly declined, but cases of syphilis in the state have drastically increased from fewer than 300 cases in 2018 to nearly 950 cases in 2023.

This is not unique to Iowa, however, syphilis cases have been on the rise nationally, and according to NPR is linked to increased substance abuse, decreased condom use and a lack of testing, or access to testing, for sexually transmitted diseases.

(Red Oak, Iowa) – Two people were arrested on separate charges Wednesday, in Red Oak. According to the Red Oak Police Department, 50-year-old Shannon Ray Porter, of Red Oak, was arrested at around 11:15-a.m., for 5th Degree Theft. Porter was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on $300 bond.

And, at around 1:10-p.m., Red Oak Police officers arrested 56-year-old Peggy Jean Bradway, of Red Oak, for Assault on persons in certain occupations – bodily injury, 1st Degree Harassment, Interference with Official Acts, Disorderly Conduct, and False reporting to Emergency Communications. Bradway was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on $2,000 bond.

DES MOINES, Iowa — The Iowa State Patrol says a trooper in Polk County recently pulled a driver over going 105 miles per hour on Highway 5. Troopers say the driver was a 16-year-old. In a social media post, the Patrol said “Imagine the disbelief on CMVU (Commercial Motor Vehicle Unit) Trooper Daniels’ face as a 16-year-old driver zipped past him on Hwy 5 (Polk County)! A great reminder…If you’re out late, remember to drive carefully on your way home—your parents will appreciate knowing you made it back safely!”

The speed limit on the highway is 70 miles per hour.

Iowa State Patrol photo

(Radio Iowa) – Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks says there are very few uncounted ballots in the first congressional district race and she is comfortable with the current margin of votes that put her ahead of Democratic challenger Christina Bohannan. At the end of Election Night, Miller-Meeks led by 413 votes. Her lead grew yesterday (Wednesday) after a county that had had problems with ballot tabulators completed its count.

“Washington County results are fully in,” she said. “Again those results showed what we expected they would show and what had we predicted they would show, which would be that I would win in Washington County and we did with 58% of the vote. That almost doubled our vote total, our margin of victory of 799 votes.”

Bohannan posted a statement on social media yesterday (Wednesday), saying the race was still too close to call and her campaign expects more ballots to come in over the coming days. Iowa candidates may request recounts in races when the winning margin is less than one percent of all votes cast — but county boards of supervisors have to meet, review the tallies of ballots and vote to make the results official first. Candidates then have three days to file for recounts.

(Radio Iowa) – It will be Kum and Go no more. A trade publication called C-Store Dive reports the Utah company that bought the Iowa-based convenience store chain in 2023 will rebrand all Kum and Go locations as Maverik stores in 2025. Sekar — chair of the department of marketing in Iowa State University’s Business School — says a brand name is one of a company’s assets.

“It’s the trust, it’s the promise, it’s the connection between the consumer and the company and it’s extremely valuable,” Raju says. “If you you look at Apple, for example, much of the value that the brand holds is actually equal to or more than all of the other assets that they have.” Kum and Go has sold caps, koozies and other items that bear the Kum and Go logo, but Raju isn’t sure of the long-term value of that memorabilia once the brand is retired.

“There will be some nostalgia related to the brand,” Raju says. “People might be collecting these things.” The Kum and Go brand was launched in the 1970s by Bill Krause and Tony Gentle, who started the chain. They opened their first gas station in 1959 in Hampton. Jim Davies, a Hampton native who’s chairman of the Hampton Historic Preservation Commission, remembers when the company started selling food and merchandise as well as gasoline.

“The stores were really nothing like the convenience stores of today,” Davies says. “They were much smaller.” Davies and his family attended the same church when the Krause family lived in Hampton. “In 1963, Krause Gentle introduced the company’s first convenience stores,” Davies says. “I think Store #1 is located on north Highway 65. There was another store located on west Highway 3 across from their corporate headquarters.”

The company’s corporate headquarters moved to Des Moines in 1988. According to C-Store Dive — a trade publication for the convenience store industry — a Maverik spokesperson said Kum and Go stores will briefly close, be rebranded as Maverik stores and reopen with the same employees.