(Radio Iowa) – A Story County man is facing several charges after a homemade explosive device was found at his home. Story County Sheriff’s deputies went to the Ledgestone Meadows mobile home park in Story City where 29-year-old Tyler Hammond lives after seeing an online video of him shooting at traffic signs with a rifle while driving. Deputies found the homemade explosive device during their search and evacuated the mobile home park until the Fire Marshal’s Office disabled the explosive device.

Hammond was charged with having a weapon as a domestic abuse offender, reckless use of a firearm shooting across a highway, and driving under suspension. The Sheriff’s office says additional charges are pending.

(Radio Iowa) – The Democrat running to be Iowa’s top election official says Governor Reynolds and her fellow Republicans in the legislature have made it far more difficult to vote by mail or vote early at a county auditor’s office. “When you’re delivering government services, it’s supposed to be about making things convenient. It’s supposed to be making your product and service more accessible. That’s not what the 2021 laws did.” That’s Joel Miller. He’s been Linn County’s Auditor for over 15 years.

“We used to have 40 days of early voting in 2016. Now we have 20,” Miller says. “It used to be the deadline to submit an absentee ballot request to a county auditor was three days before the election. Now it’s 15 days before the election.” Miller says 101 Linn County voters missed that deadline to vote early in the June Primary and half of them wound up NOT voting. Other county auditors saw a similar drop off according to Miller. “That can have huge ramifications this fall,” Miller says. Miller is challenging Republican Secretary of State Paul Pate’s bid for reelection. Miller questions why Pate is spending resources on his Iowa Businesses Against Trafficking initiative.

“I am against human trafficking. I’m sure you’re against human trafficking, but there’s an office to combat human trafficking within the Department of Public Safety that’s been there almost 10 years,” Miller says. “Go look up the duties of the Secretary of State. You will not find any duties related to human trafficking…Yes, he’s bringing visibility, but he’s wasting tax dollars.” Miller made his comments on the Des Moines Register’s Political Soapbox at the Iowa State Fair.

The Secretary of State’s office is where businesses in Iowa register their trade names and earlier this year Pate says he aims to build a statewide coalition of businesses who share the goal of ending human trafficking in Iowa. An Iowa Republican Party spokesman says Pate’s record of safe and secure elections speaks for itself, as turnout has been increasing alongside new election integrity measures.

(Radio Iowa) – Researchers at Iowa State University say they’re making progress toward finding ways so people don’t get “cybersick” when using virtual reality headsets. Jonathan Kelly, an I-S-U professor of psychology and human computer interaction, says cybersickness can be temporarily debilitating — and a big turnoff toward using the technology.  “It commonly includes nausea, sweating, dizziness, headache and eyestrain,” Kelly says. Earlier studies showed that more than half of first-time virtual reality headset users experienced cybersickness within ten minutes. The new I-S-U research is finding the more a person uses V-R, the less woozy they become.

“Exposure to virtual reality seems to gradually reduce this experience of cybersickness,” Kelly says. “This is similar to other forms of motion sickness, car sickness, sea sickness, where for most people, if they experienced that sickness initially, it will eventually reduce over repeated exposures.” Studies involving about 150 I-S-U undergrads found that most experienced little to no cybersickness after three V-R sessions of 20 minutes each. Kelly says there are tools that can be used to minimize cybersickness. “They generally degrade the visual information in the virtual world, but by doing so, they reduce the experience of cybersickness,” Kelly says. “So we’re interested in whether adaptation under those circumstances will also serve the purpose of adapting them to cyber sickness so we can later open up the visual world to them more fully.”

ISU student Taylor Doty using VR. (ISU-photo)

V-R isn’t just for playing video games. It’s being used in all sorts of professions from military training to health care. Since so many people get sick during their first attempts, Kelly says it makes sense to ease users into V-R.  “You could imagine that someday there would be kind of a training protocol,” Kelly says. “That would gently adapt virtual reality users so that they can be immune to cyber sickness and other applications that they might explore later on.”

As internet connections improve and prices on V-R gear come down, Kelly predicts most people will at least be exposed to virtual reality either through entertainment or their jobs.

(Radio Iowa) – Democrat Tom Miller, the nation’s longest serving attorney general, says if he’s elected to an 11th term, he’ll continue to pursue cases against companies that scam Iowans.  “I just feel very lucky to be attorney general because we get to use the law to serve the interests of ordinary Iowans,” Miller says. Miller says consumer protection efforts in the office extend to farmers and the current investigation of sky high fertilizer prices. “Most of all, we’re communicating the message: ‘Somebody is watching,'” Miller says. “We’re working with the Department of Ag, with (U.S. Agriculture Secretary) Tom Vilsack and with the farm groups.”

Miller made his comments on the Des Moines Register’s Political Soapbox at the Iowa State Fair. Brenna Bird, the Republican running against Miller this year, spoke at the same venue earlier this week. Bird vows that as attorney general, she would go to federal court to challenge Biden Administration policies. “It looks like our attorney general is Biden’s attorney general,” Bird says. “…He joined a lot of lawsuits against the Trump Administration. Remember that?” Miller says Bird would pursue a partisan agenda as attorney general. “Her passion is for this extreme anti-regulation, extreme economics,” Miller says.

Bird also accuses Miller of failing to actively engage with local law enforcement. “I meet all the time with sheriffs that have never met him, not once, not even shook his hand,” Bird says, “so you know that will certainly change when I’m attorney general.” In response, Miller says he and his staff each year work on up to 13-hundred of the toughest criminal prosecutions in state court. “We’ve developed a great relationship with law enforcement. We work a lot with them on these cases — Department of Public Safety, but local law enforcement as well,” Miller says. “It’s a relationship of respect, trust and common good. We really see the need to protect Iowans.”

Miller was first elected attorney general in 1978. He did not seek re-election in 1990 when he ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic Party’s nomination for governor. Miller was re-elected attorney general in 1994 and is currently serving his 10th term.

(Radio Iowa) -Iowa’s unemployment rate went down again in July — hitting 2.5%. “It hasn’t been this low since May of 2019 — so well before the pandemic,” Iowa Workforce Development Director Beth Townsend says. She says. July extends the string of months where unemployment has dropped. “It’s the seven-month consecutive month where we’ve seen a declining unemployment rate,” she says. “We won’t know where that ranks nationally until Friday when those numbers come out.”

She says more people are returning to work than had previously left the workforce, and employers creating more jobs. “The unemployed number fell by 600 — but we have 1,800 new people in the workforce from June to July, and we’re up almost 59,000 more Iowans are working, 58,600, to be specific from this time last year,” according to Townsend. “So that’s a really positive sign to have that large of an increase over time of people returning to work.”

The workforce participation rate held at 67.8% in July. Townsend says they still like to see it up around 69.5%, but the number hasn’t been dropping as it did during the pandemic. “We still added 1,400 people to the labor force in July. So it just shows that people are continuing, if they’re not employed, they’re continuing to look for work, they want to work. So that’s a good sign where we aren’t seeing people fall out of the labor force,” she says.

Townsend credits their re-employment case management system for helping those who lose their jobs to get back in the workforce. “We’re reaching out to people the first week they file unemployment, helping them, you know, have a plan to search for that next job, update their resumes, go to interview classes, getting them connected with employers that are hiring in their area of expertise or interest, ” she says.

There are more than 85,000 jobs still available in the state. Some critics say the jobs don’t pay enough for people to live on. Townsend disagrees. “Well, not in today’s economy. I mean, if you look around most intimate most employers have a starting wage of $15 an hour to be competitive, and that’s…in restaurants and hospitality,” Townsend says. “In advanced manufacturing, you’re seeing starting rates between, you know, closer to $20 an hour.”

Townsend says nobody’s working for minimum wage these days. She says historically less than one to two percent of those in the workforce work at the minimum rate — and it is to be a rate for individuals at the entry-level position.

(Radio Iowa) – The Camanche City Council has turned down the settlement Canadian Pacific Railroad is offering to address far more train traffic in the area. Canadian Pacific Railway is acquiring Kansas City Southern, a merger that’s expected to eventually triple train traffic through parts of eastern and southern Iowa. Davenport’s City Council has voted to accept a 10-million dollar settlement. The Bettendorf and Muscatine City Councils have both agreed to three million dollar settlements. Canadian Pacific offered Camanche 200-thousand dollars, for closing two of the seven railroad crossings in Camanche.

The mayor of Camanche has told media outlets in the Quad Cities area that is not acceptable and, if a train carrying crude oil from Canada derailed, the only escape route for 12-hundred Camanche residents would be the Mississippi River.  Federal officials are still reviewing the proposed merger of Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern. If approved, the company would be the only single-line railroad linking Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

(Radio Iowa) – Ottumwa police say a man shot his wife with a crossbow while she slept early Wednesday morning. The victim was identified as 68-year-old Lillian Dennison who was sleeping on a couch when she was allegedly attacked shortly after 1:00 AM. The victim was transported to the hospital and treated for minor injuries. Lieutenant Jason Bell says at approximately 10:00 the same morning, 68-year-old George Dennison was taken into custody after being found in a wooded area near the home.

George Dennison has been charged with attempted murder and domestic abuse assault. He is being held in the Wapello County Jail on a 50-thousand dollar bond.