(Radio Iowa) – Black Friday is just a few weeks away, launching another holiday shopping season, but a University of Iowa study finds people who are lonely may find themselves unable to resist the impulse to buy. Marketing Professor Alice Wang, in the U-I’s Tippie College of Business, says loneliness is different for everyone, but if someone perceives themselves as having a relationship deficit, they may be more susceptible to compulsive shopping.

In the U-I study, Wang says they asked people to think about their existing relationships, and to elaborate on them in writing, perhaps how your current friends helped you through a tough time. Such an exercise can help to change perspectives, she says, and change habits.

Of course, there’s no magic number of friends we all require, it depends on the individual, but Wang says some of us may benefit from focusing less on what we don’t have and more on all we -do- have.

As we near the holidays, she suggests people who may be feeling lonely and isolated take stock of the good things in their lives, possessions -and- people, and work to monitor themselves so they don’t buy things they don’t need.

The Winneshiek County Auditor is raising concerns about Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate’s order to challenge the ballots of over two-thousand Iowans flagged as potential non-citizens. Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson reports.

This (Friday) afternoon, a federal judge heard arguments in the lawsuit that alleges Pate’s order is violating the rights of Iowans who have recently become U-S citizens. Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird’s office defended the action and Bird says it’s about making sure legally cast votes aren’t cancelled out by non-citizens.

Secretary of State Pate says the federal government is refusing the share data that’s critical to ensuring only eligible U.S. citizens vote in our elections. The driver’s license data Pate used indicates at some point in the past two decades over two-thousand people who are on Iowa’s list of registered voters told the D-O-T they were legal residents, but not citizens of the United States.

(Radio Iowa) – The University of Northern Iowa is implementing a new curriculum for its teaching students this fall. Associate Dean Benjamin Forsyth says the curriculum is designed to better prepare students to teach in a changing classroom. One of the biggest changes will be improving teaching programs for English language learners .

Forsyth says the changes could also anticipate how students and educators are using A-I in the classroom.

More than 25-hundred undergrad and graduate students at U-N-I, or about one quarter of them, are studying education.

(Radio Iowa) -Nearly 80-thousand Iowans have become active registered voters in the past month. As of today, Republicans have a 173-thousand voter registration edge over Democrats in Iowa, a slight increase from October 1st. The number of independent voters in Iowa grew by 25-thousand over the past month — with half a MILLION Iowans registered as independent or “no party” voters.

The latest data from county auditors and the Iowa Secretary of State’s office shows Republicans outnumber Democrats in each of Iowa’s four congressional districts. As of Thursday night, over 556-thousand Iowans had already voted by mail or in person at an early voting site in their county.

(Ames, Iowa) – A head-on crash Thursday night in Ames claimed the life of one person and left another person injured. The Iowa State Patrol reports the crash happened in the westbound lanes of 13th Street in Ames, at around 11:57-p.m., Thursday.

The Patrol says a 2003 Buick SUV driven by 67-year-old John Husted Berg, of Ames, was traveling the wrong way on 13th Street just east of Hyland, when his vehicle struck a 2019 Honda Fit driven by 28-year-old Kari Rachelle Storjohann, also of Ames. Husted was not wearing a seat belt and died from his injuries at Mary Greeley Hospital in Ames.

Storjohann was transported to the same hospital. The crash remains under investigation. The Patrol was assisted at the scene by Story County EMS.