With Ric Hanson.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (4.4MB)

Subscribe: RSS

(Omaha, Nebraska) – A fisherman who saw what he thought was a body in the Missouri River, Thursday, under the I680 bridge, alerted authorities, who recovered the remains of a child who had been missing from N.P. Dodge Park in Omaha, since Tuesday evening.

Authorities had searched for 7-year-old Abi Gurung since he disappeared. Police say no foul play is suspected. N.P. Dodge Park, which was closed during the investigation, reopened this (Friday) morning.

The Gurung family told KETV they’re planning on a funeral ceremony where Buddhist monks will pray over Abi’s body before cremation. A friend of the family said Abi was born in America, and his parents worked hard raising him to be a good citizen.

The Cass County Sheriff’s Office reports three arrests took place the first-half of this week. On Monday, 43-year-old Jeffery Lee Simpson, of Council Bluffs, was arrested for possession of a controlled substance, OWI 1^st Offense and possession of drug paraphernalia.  Simpson was transported to Cass County Jail where he remained held as of the latest report.

On Wednesday, Cass County Sheriff’s Deputies arrested 47-year-old John Duane Anderson, of Cumberland, on a Cass County warrant for domestic abuse assault 1^st offense.  Anderson was transported to Cass County Jail where he later posted bond.

And, on Thursday, 41-year-old Jamie Marie Tallant, of Council Bluffs, was arrested in Cass County for OWI 3^rd offense and driving under suspension.  Tallant was transported to Cass County Jail where she was later released after posting bond.

(Radio Iowa) – Electric scooters will be a form of public transportation in another Iowa city. Burlington has partnered with the Los Angeles-based company Bird Rides to bring a total of 35 shared electric scooters to the city. Burlington City Manager Chad Bird said that the scooters made for a “useful way to bridge the gap between public transportation and a person’s home or work.”

The scooters are rented and tracked through a mobile app, which riders use to find a scooter, and pay for their use by the minute at no cost to the city. The company plans on offering scooters to residents and visitors in order to help reduce carbon emissions, as well as traffic congestion on roadways.

A Bird brand scooter

Cedar Rapids has an electric scooter sharing program and Davenport officials are considering an e-scooter ordinance. In April, Mason City signed a scooter contract with the same company Burlington is using.

(Radio Iowa) – A group that advocates for the civil rights of Hispanics is asking Iowa’s Secretary of State to offer documents related to voting that are translated into other languages. “Thousands of Iowa citizens have been denied their right to have election material, including the ballot, in other languages,” says Joe Henry, a member of LULAC’s Iowa board of directors. Under federal guidelines, Tama County offers voting materials in the Meskwaki language and Buena Vista County has translated documents in Spanish. LULAC has filed a formal request, asking the secretary of state to allow voting materials be made available statewide in Spanish, Burmese and other languages.

“This should not be difficult for the secretary of state to acknowledge the right of Iowans who are U.S. citizens to have voting material, election material in other languages,” If that doesn’t happen, Henry says the group may go to court. “If our rights are not acknowledged, then we will go to court to demand justice,” Henry says. “…We hope that the secretary of state…realizes that our rights have not been upheld. They’ve been held hostage.”

The Iowa secretary of state’s office previously allowed translated voting materials throughout the state, but changed the practice in 2008. A district court judge ruled that voter registration forms offered in other languages conflicted with the state’s so-called “English Only” law requiring government business be conducted in English. Henry says that interpretation conflicts with the constitutional right to vote and he says the ruling should have been appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court.

A spokesman for Iowa’s secretary of state says the office “will follow the process outlined in state law” as it reviews LULAC’s request for administration action.

With Ric Hanson.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (4.7MB)

Subscribe: RSS

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office reports 21-year-old Tyler Baucom, of Red Oak, was arrested Thursday on a warrant for Violation of a Protective Order. Baucom was being held on a $2,000 cash bond in the Montgomery County Jail.

Tyler Baucom

Firefighters from Anita, and several other area departments responded to a machine shed fire late Thursday night, south of Anita. The Cass County Communications Center dispatched Anita Fire to 61424 765th Street at around 10:02-p.m. According to Anita Fire Chief Eric Steffenson, the structure was fully engulfed in flames. Mutual aid was requested from fire departments in Cumberland, Massena, Wiota, Bridgewater, and Fontanelle. The blaze was quickly knocked down, and the last units left the scene at around 12:15-a.m. Friday (today), but they returned a little while later, after a brief storm knocked down a wall of the shed, causing the fire to reignite.

Machinery inside the shed, including tractors, a vehicle, and a side-by-side, along with building materials were lost to the flames. A nearby vehicle sustained damage from the heat.

The cause of the fire was not immediately clear.

(Radio Iowa) – The UnityPoint Health system is the latest to announce it will require employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19 .

UnityPoint says all employees in the 31 Iowa hospitals in its network are required to be vaccinated by November 1st, regardless of whether they provide direct patient care or not. President and CEO Clay Holderman says in a statement that “We believe this vaccination requirement will help keep our team members, patients, and communities as healthy as possible”

Those who are not vaccinated by the deadline will be asked to resign or be fired. The other large hospital network in Iowa, MercyOne, announced in July that they are requiring all employees to be vaccinated by September 21st.

A spokesperson tells Radio Iowa UnityPoint has 24,000 employees in Iowa.

(Radio Iowa) – While forecasters say Iowa’s high temperatures will be back in the 80s and 90s for the next several summer days, it’s hard to think about the foul, frigid winter that’s ahead — but we all know, it’s coming.

Peter Geiger, editor of the Farmers’ Almanac, says the 2022 edition will be out next week and its winter weather outlook for Iowa and the Midwest isn’t pretty. “It’s going to be colder than normal and in terms of the snowfall, we talk about a foot of snow January 8th through the 11th,” Geiger says. “We talk about a big blizzard on the 20th through the 23rd. I think your average in Iowa is somewhere in the 30-inch range and I think you certainly will get that.”

It’s said if you don’t like the weather in Iowa, just wait five minutes and it’ll change, and Geiger predicts there will be a lot of back-and-forth. “I think you’re going to have a fairly rough winter,” Geiger says. “We’re also saying it’s going to be a bit of a flip-flop. So what’s going to happen, as we see it, is that you’re going to get a lot of snow, then it’s going to be mild, then you’re going to get really cold, and then it’s going to be mild.”

The Farmers’ Almanac forecast is detailed and Geiger says some dedicated readers plan their calendars around it. He says “numb’s the word” as for the bone-chilling predictions in the looming winter. “We talk about a real big storm December 1st through the 4th, a real blast of Arctic frigidity with temperatures minus-20 around Christmas, then we talk about a mild beginning of January, heavy snow in the middle of January, a big storm at the end of January and then, this is the flip-flop, in February, it’s going to be cold but we don’t talk about a lot of storms,” Geiger says. “Then in March, we talk about a big storm March 4th through the 7th that will hit you and then a late season storm on April 24th to the 27th.”

The Farmer’s Almanac winter forecast.

That late-season storm may just be rain, not snow, he adds. While some meteorologists on TV may not be comfortable predicting the weather farther out than several days, Geiger says the Farmers’ Almanac has been working on forecasts up to 24 months out — and they’ve been doing so for more than 200 years.

“There’s a mathematical formula that was devised by our first editor, David Young back in the 1800s, because farmers needed to know about the weather,” Geiger says. “We apply sunspot activity, planet positions, the effect the Moon has on the Earth, and that allows us to do our weather two years in advance. Some weather people pooh-pooh it, but last year, when Texas had that cold spell, that was in the Almanac.”

The 2022 edition of the Farmers’ Almanac includes specifics about the many predictions it got right for the past year. Geiger admits, they don’t hit every single storm on every single date, but says if you give him a few days of leeway, it’s remarkably reliable.

Founded in 1818 and still based in Lewiston, Maine, the Farmers’ Almanac contains weather predictions for the entire four seasons of 2022 as well as all sorts of information on gardening, cooking, home remedies, folklore, managing your household, living in harmony with nature, and more.