(Radio Iowa) – The State Board of Education has approved plans by the University of Northern Iowa to offer an online accelerated elementary education and special education teacher program. U-N-I’s Director of Education Preparation, Benjamin Forsyth says courses in this program will be offered in eight-week, eight-credit terms. “The way we had to do this to be able to accelerate was to bundle courses that typically aren’t taught simultaneously,” he says. You will need an Associate of Arts (AA) or Associate of Science Degree and must be employed as a paraeducator or teachers’ aide within a K through sixth-grade school setting to get into the program. Forsyth says surveys on the interest in such a program show it is high.

“Just one example, on Facebook, if you and I say hey we’re doing something, you got about three shares, we’re up to almost 200 shares on this,” Forsyth says. Iowa and other states have been struggling with teacher shortages, and it’s hoped this will help. “We’re expecting a lot of people to apply, but then a portion of those not to actually meet requirements. And because chapter 79 is the way it is we really can’t take anyone that doesn’t have an A-A or A-S. We really can’t take a paraeducator that’s teaching preschool because they’ve got to have these field experiences,” he says. Forsyth says they will slowly get the program rolling.

“We want to take as many as we can but we’re not expecting to go that large on this first round,” Forsyth says, “we know that we don’t have the resources to go beyond about 30 or 60. We know that we’re going to have to work out some bugs on the first round but we want to see this happen.” Those who complete the accelerated program will have a Bachelor of Arts in Elementary Education and a minor in Special Education with teaching endorsements for a K-6 elementary teacher and K-8 instructional strategist.

The State Board of Education approved the plan at their meeting on Thursday.

(Red Oak , Iowa) – A traffic stop Thursday night in Red Oak, resulted in the arrest of a man wanted for Forgery. Red Oak Police say 30-year-old Aaron Garfield Nelson, of Red Oak, was taken into custody on a Red Oak Police warrant for four felony counts of Forgery. Nelson was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on a $20,000 cash-only bond.

(Radio Iowa) – One of the largest employers in Clinton is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Governor Kim Reynolds and other officials joined A-D-M leaders Wednesday to mark the anniversary of the company’s corn processing plant purchase from Nabisco. Plant Manager Eric Fasnacht says A-D-M has significantly expanded the plant in the four decades — and it currently processes 350 thousand bushels of corn a day from local farmers and elevators. That works out to between 400 and 500 truckloads a day.

“Separate the corn kernel into its fractions – we make different kinds of corn sweetener, dry starches, crystalline sugars, and feed components that go out to the animal food or feed industry,” he says. There are around one thousand employees in the plant every day from A-D-M and local contractors. The company also celebrated the opening of a new mill to process corn that cost 250 million dollars. And Fasnact says the company will continue to invest in Clinton.

“We’re looking at even another project that’ll be starting here in the fall with a Japanese company that we’re partnering with on another big project, so we’ll see some of that starting to happen later this year, ” Fasnact says. Hiring for that joint project has already started. He says a corn processing facility first opened in Clinton back in the early 1900’s, and Nabisco is believed to have purchased the plant in the 1950’s and run it until selling to A-D-M in 1982.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa’s largest water utility has begun operating its nitrate removal facility, as nitrate levels have spiked in the rivers that are the source of drinking water to 600-thousand customers. Ted Corrigan is general manager and C-E-O of the Des Moines Water Works.  “It isn’t as easy as just flipping a switch, but we’ve tested everything fairly recently and we can put the whole process into action pretty quickly, within a couple of hours or so.” Corrigan says spring rains washed nitrates off land upstream.

“It’s not uncommon at all for us to see high nitrogen concentrations in both the Des Moines and Raccoon River when we have a wet spring following a dry fall or a even dry year, like we had last year,” so it’s not really a surprise, but we are seeing nutrients that are coming off the landscape after basically having been stored there during the dry conditions of the last couple of years.” Employees are monitoring the processed water that is pumped to customers in the Des Moines area and Corrigan says it is safe to drink.

“Customers shouldn’t notice any difference in the treated drinking water,” Corrigan says. “It meets all the federal drinking water standards.” It costs about 10-thousand dollars per day to operate the nitrate removal equipment. “The length of time that we’ll have to run the facility is very dependent on how much flow we see in the river and the temperature,” Corrigan says. Corrigan expects the operation to run for several weeks. The last time the nitrate removal facility at the Des Moines Water Works was running was in 2017 and what was removed was diluted and returned to the river.

“We’re no longer able to do that and not because of the nitrate, but because of the chloride that’s in the waste stream. We don’t want to put that back in the river,” Corrigan says, “so now we actually have a pumping station that sends that waste stream to the wastewater treatment plant and they run it through their process.” Due to nitrate runoff, Corrigan says tests on Tuesday started to show the utility’s river water source had nitrate levels close to the federal cutoff for safe drinking water, so the nitrate removal facility began operations.

“We literally need millions — 10 million, 15 million acres of cover crops in the state. We need thousands of saturated buffers. We need hundreds of wetlands across the state,” Corrigan says, “and those practices are being implemented across the state, but not at a scale to see a measurable difference in water quality.” On Monday night in GRINNELL, there was a catastrophic failure in a large water pipe and nine-thousand customers of Grinnell’s water utility were advised to boil water before drinking it. The pipe rupture was repaired, the water tower refilled and tests of water in eh system showed no bacterial contamination, so Grinnell officials lifted the boil order on Thursday.

(Atlantic, Iowa) – District Court Judge Amy Zacharias, Thursday, approved a request from attorneys for Alison Dorsey, to continue her 1st Degree Murder and Child Endangerment trial until Dec. 5, 2022, at 9:30-a.m. The trial – which will held in Council Bluffs – was set to take place June 20th. A pre-trial conference in her case will now be held 8-a.m. November 29, 2022.

Her Cass County trial in the fall of 2021 ended in a mistrial due to a deadlocked jury. Dorsey was, and will be, on trial for the death of an infant while in her care in October 2019.

(Radio Iowa) – A young woman from Iowa who will compete in this year’s Miss America Pageant will be crowned this weekend in Davenport. Rachael Vopatek, president of the Miss Iowa Scholarship Program, says there are 30 candidates who will be taking part in a combined program, 14 in the Miss Outstanding Teen contest and 16 who hope to become the next Miss Iowa.

“Competition begins today with the private interviews,” Vopatek says. “They’ll be meeting with the judges one-on-one and each candidate gets that private time to answer questions and let the judges get to know them, and that becomes one of our preliminary scores.” The contestants will be competing in categories including: onstage interview, a Red Carpet event, and talent.

“We have everything from vocal performances, musical theater, we have violin, we have piano,” Vopatek says. “We have several different types of dancing, we have ballet on point, we have lyrical ballets, and we do have some dramatic monologues, too.” Another important element is what’s known as the Social Impact Pitch, what used to be called the platform.

“Basically, it’s a cause that each candidate feels passionately about,” Vopatek says. “So they choose their own social impact initiative and even leading up to this competition, it’s something that they’ve been working on on their own time. We’ve got things from urban farming to education and literacy, it’s just all across the board.” Some three-dozen colleges are offering scholarships, while the new Miss Iowa will claim a prize package that also includes a car, a fur coat and more.

The competition is underway at the Adler Theatre in Davenport and the winners will be crowned on Saturday night. The teen winner will go on to the national contest in Dallas in August, while the new Miss Iowa will compete for Miss America in December in Connecticut.

(Radio Iowa) – The Des Moines-based company which makes medical marijuana products for the state is changing its name. MedPharm Iowa is now called “Bud & Mary’s Cannabis.” Company group president, Lucas Nelson, says they have expanded into Colorado and Michigan, and the change better represents what they do. “We felt like, in part, obviously, Iowa was in the name for our previous company name, but that it was no longer as reflective of the company, the approach, and the way we’re trying to use science to bring the bring cannabis and to bring these products to all the people who might be able to benefit from them,” Nelson says.

He says the new name honors his grandfather, who was nicknamed Bud, and his grandmother Mary. Nelson says it also sends the signal that their products have a lot of different uses. “You know, we have had people in the past tell us that, oh, well, that sounds like a pharmaceutical, and so that must not be for me, where that’s just simply not the case,” according to Nelson. “I mean, here in Iowa, it’s now very, very easy to get a card, it’s easy to get online. If you qualify for one of those conditions, the process is extremely quick, it’s simple. It’s not the kind of heavy list that it used to be.”

He says while the number of customers has been increasing — there were still some who saw the MedPharm name and didn’t consider the products. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard — even some friends of mine — but people at the events we go to across Iowa, say, ‘Well, I don’t I’m not dying. So that wouldn’t help me even though I’m in tremendous pain, or, you know, my condition isn’t that bad. So that must not be for me’,” Nelson says. He says Bud & Mary’s Cannabis name also reminds people they are a family-owned business that has been around a long time.

“It’s a way to separate ourselves from some of those larger corporations, those public companies that, you know, I think there’s a perception that they may not have, you know, as personal of a touch, let’s say with some of their operations,” Nelson explains. The name change and rebranding also comes with more than 10 million dollars in investment to expand their existing Des Moines facility to increase cannabis production by three times what it is now. They plan to hire 20 more people to work at the facility once the expansion is complete.

The company’s Windsor Heights and Sioux City dispensaries were transitioned to the new name on June 3rd. The company plans to build a new cultivation & production facility in Michigan in the second half of this year, and will build a new dispensary in Michigan this summer. They plan to expand their existing Colorado production facility later this year.

(Atlantic, Iowa) – The Cass County Board of Supervisors met in a Special Session Thursday afternoon (June 9th), following a written request from Cass County Auditor Sara Harris, for an administrative recount of some precincts (Mentioned below), following the June 7, 2022 Primary Election. The recount was requested due to a reported discrepancy between the OVO machine (ballot scanner) and the number of signed declarations of eligibility forms. The counts were any where from one to two votes than higher than they should have been.  Harris said the reason for discrepancy was due to a ballot jam or machine malfunction and per the Secretary of State’s office when this occurs an administrative recount is recommended.

She reports the following precincts will be included in the administrative recount:
– Precinct 2, Atlantic 2 – machine off by 1
– Precinct 3, Atlantic 3 – machine off by 1
– Precinct 5, Atlantic 5 – machine off by 2
– Precinct 6, Bear Grove/Cass/Lewis – machine off by 1
– Precinct 7, Benton/Franklin/Grant/Lincoln/Wiota/Anita – machine off by 1
– Precinct 8, Brighton/ Grove/Pymosa/Washington/Marne – machine off by 1
– Precinct 9, Noble/Pleasant/Griswold – machine off by 1

The Board approved a letter authorizing Sara Harris to conduct an administrative recount at 1-p.m. on Friday, June 10th, 2022. Their next regular meeting is Tuesday, June 14, 2022, the day of the official vote canvass.

(Atlantic, Iowa) – The Cass County Sheriff’s Office reports two arrests took place Sunday, June 5th:

63-year-old Dawn Good, of Casey, was arrested on a warrant for Violation of Probation. And, 30-year-old  Jordan Kopp, of Anita, was arrested for OWI 3rd Offense.  Kopp was transported to the Cass County Jail where he was booked and later released on his own recognizance.

And, on June 1st, Deputies in Cass County arrested 34-year-old Joanna Seagler, of Massena, for OWI/1st offense. Seagler was transported to the Cass County Jail where she was booked and held until her later release on her own recognizance.

All criminal charges are merely accusations, and the defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty in the court of law.

(Casey, Iowa) -A person who allegedly tried to break into a home in Adair County was shot by the occupant of the home, early this (Thursday) morning. According to the Adair County Sheriff’s Office, at around 3:18-a.m., the Adair County Communications Center received a cellular 911 call reporting a vehicle in the median of Interstate 80 near the Adair rest areas in Adair County. An Adair County sheriff’s deputy responded and shortly after his arrival, determined that the crashed vehicle had previously been reported as stolen to the Omaha Police Department. Officers from the Stuart Police Department and their K9 unit were summoned to assist in locating the driver of the stolen vehicle.

At approximately 4:30-a.m.,  the Adair County Communications Center received a cellular 911 call from a rural residence southwest of Casey, in Adair County. The occupant of the home reported that someone had tried to break into his home and that he, the occupant of the residence, had shot the suspected intruder. Officers searching for the driver of the stolen vehicle, who were in the immediate area, responded and administered first aid to the wounded subject. Adair Rescue and the Adair County Ambulance responded to the scene to provide additional medical aid. The suspected intruder was transported by an Air-Ambulance to a Des Moines area hospital where he is receiving treatment for multiple gun shot wounds.

Although in the very preliminary stages of the investigation, Sheriff Jeff Vandewater says it is believed that the sole resident of the home was awoken to the sound of strange noises. A short time later, the resident of the home heard additional loud noises and glass breaking and encountered an individual whom he believed to be unlawfully attempting to enter his home through a broken window. The resident of the home fired multiple shots at the suspected intruder and then called 911.

The identity of the suspected intruder has not been confirmed at this time. The Adair County Sheriff’s Office has asked the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation to assist with the investigation. The Adair County Sheriff’s Office, the Stuart Police Department, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, Adair Fire and Rescue and the Adair County Ambulance all collaborated to resolve this incident. There will be no additional updates until the investigation is concluded.

The Sheriff said “There is NO information available to law enforcement that indicates there is an ongoing danger to the public and it is believed this is an isolated incident.”