(Radio Iowa) – A northwest Iowa man was killed in a two-vehicle accident on Monday afternoon. The Iowa State Patrol reports that at about 2:30 p.m., 71-year-old Curtis Brownmiller of Spencer was driving a 2017 Nissan westbound on Highway 18, east of Hull when he struck the back of a truck driven by 43-year-old Jeffrey Ver Hoef of Hull, which was stopped and waiting for traffic to clear before turning left.

Brownmiller was taken to the Sioux Center Health Hospital by ambulance, where he died from his injuries.

(Radio Iowa) – A woman who lived on the Meskwaki settlement near Tama died Monday after being attacked by a pack of dogs. The fatal attack took place in the area of Springs Road, which is a little more than a mile southeast of the Meskwaki Casino and south of U-S Highway 30, near the Iowa River. Details of the incident and the identity of the person who died have not yet been released.

All of the dogs suspected to have been involved in the incident have been killed, according to the Meskwaki Nation Police Department.

(Red Oak, Iowa) – A man from Mills County was arrested Monday evening, in Montgomery County. The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office reports 38-year-old Garret Horgdal, of Henderson, was arrested at around 6:15-p.m., on an active Mills County warrant for Violation of Probation, on an original charge of Stalking/Harassment in the 1st Degree, and Harassment in the 2nd Degree. He was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on a $10,000 bond.

(Radio Iowa) A state panel will meet later this (Tuesday) morning to review challenges to the nominating forms for EIGHT candidates for primary elections in June, including an incumbent who’s seeking an 11th term in office.

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller and five other candidates face challenges based on the signatures on their nominating petitions. The State Objection Panel is being asked to decide whether some of the people who signed the documents actually live in the areas where candidates had to collect signatures. The attorney general is one of the three members of the review panel, so it’s likely the lieutenant governor will take his place when Miller’s case is reviewed. In 2018, a Republican running for governor was booted from the ballot after several duplicate signatures were found. That left the final tally of nominating signatures short of what was required.

The nominating papers Democratic U.S. Senate candidates Abby Finkenauer and Mike Franken submitted are being challenged, plus an objection has been filed over the forms submitted by a Republican candidate who hopes to run against Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks in the June Primary. A Democrat from the Ankeny area has filed a challenge of Senate Republican Leader Jack Whitver’s paperwork for the primary, saying Whitver hasn’t listed the address of the home he intends to move into.

A spokesman for Whitver says there are no legal grounds for the complaint. He pointed to Iowa law, which requires candidates to establish a residence in the district they intend to represent 60 days before the GENERAL Election, not the June Primary. State Representative Jeff Shipley of Fairfield, a Republican, had the signatures of 53 people on his nominating petitions. Fifty signatures are required and a prominent Republican attorney has filed a challenge to some of those signatures.

hipley is planning to run for reelection in a new district — where he’d face another G-O-P incumbent. Finally, the State Objection Panel has been asked to decide whether a Democrat in northwest Iowa has lived in Iowa long enough to run for office.

(Radio Iowa) – A House committee has approved a plan to hike the pay for providing in-home care for Iowans with disabilities. The move comes as a federal review is expected to call for moving residents with disabilities out of state institutions in Glenwood and Woodward — and into home and community-based settings. Republican Representative Joel Fry of Osceola says the House G-O-P budget plan sets aside more than 14-and-a-half million dollars for that effort.

“I’m hopeful that that shows a genuine intent on the legislature to the federal government that we are serious about getting individuals into the communities well cared for,” Fry says, “and making sure the services exist in the communities for them.”

Representative John Forbes, a Democrat from Urbandale, says under this plan, it appears direct care workers could be paid about three dollars an hour more. “It gets them up in the $16, maybe $17 an hour range in some cases,” Forbes says.

But while Forbes and other Democrats say they support the pay increase for direct care workers, but they voted against the more than two billion dollar budget plan for the state’s public health and human services agencies. Democrats object to a COVID-related proposal added to the budget bill. It would let Iowa doctors prescribe a medication primarily used to treat parasites as an experimental treatment for patients on a ventilator or who are terminally ill.

Some Republican legislators say they’ve heard from family members who tried unsuccessfully to get ivermectin for loved ones hospitalized with COVID. A recent study found early use of the drug by high risk hospital patients with COVID did not stop them from being seriously ill.

(Radio Iowa) – The executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, Monte Shaw, says it appears more people are turning to ethanol-blended fuels to save money. He says just about anyone can use blends like E-15. “Ninety-five, 98 percent of the cars on the road could buy E-15. And if you have access to it — you might as well get the extra point of octane — that’s why they call it unleaded 88 — and you can get it at the lower price,” Shaw says. “And if you are like me flex-fuel vehicle, E-85 is really the way to go.”

He says E-85 vehicles will often have a yellow gas cap or sticker on the window that says they can use the 85 percent ethanol-gas mix. The E-10 mix is the one most used in cars right now. Shaw says retailers have different pricing for the ethanol blends. “At different stations, there are sometimes five and ten cents differences in what the discounts are. So, it probably pays to check out some price signs when you are diving between, work, school, home, wherever it is you go,” Shaw says.

He says you will find more options for different mixes of ethanol-blended gas in the larger cities. “We only have about 300 stations out of about 22-hundred that offer the E-85, and I think there’s about 250 stations out of the 22-hundred that offer E-15,” according to Shaw. “So we are working on that, in fact, there’s a bill in the legislature that would make sure that many, many, many more Iowans get access to that as a choice.”

Shaw says there’s a tool to help you find the stations on their website at: iowarfa.org. “You just go under fueling your vehicle, there’s a tab at the top. It has information on what blend does work in your car, and then it has the E-15 sites and the E-85sites, you can search it and everything,” he says.

Shaw says you can also check the owner’s manual of your car and it will tell you what type of fuel works in your car or truck.

(Radio Iowa) – The number of female officers in the U.S. military has quadrupled since the turn of the century. Iowa Senator Joni Ernst retired from the Iowa National Guard in 2015 at the rank of lieutenant colonel, but when she joined the military in the early 1990s, women were not allowed to serve in combat roles. “Through the Army Reserves and then later on in the Iowa Army National Guard there were very few women engaged in the military,” Ernst says.

By 2003, Ernst was the commander of a transportation unit that deployed to Kuwait and she says 12 percent of the unit’s soldiers were women. “That company that I commanded was originally an all-male unit,” Ernst says. “So when I was just coming into the armory where we were located in Red Oak, Iowa, quite literally the women didn’t even have their own locker room. Their bathroom was built into a broom closet underneath the stairs.”

Linda Upmeyer, Joni Ernst during forum.

The latest data shows about 16 percent of Iowa National Guard members are women. The senator’s daughter is enrolled at the U.S. Military Academy and Ernst says 25 percent of the West Point cadets are women. Ernst made her comments today (Monday) during an online forum hosted by the Iowa G-O-P to mark the end of women’s history month.