(Radio Iowa) – Vaping among Iowa teens is at epidemic levels and officials with the American Lung Association are launching an effort to provide kids better access to cessation programs, support and education. Beth Turner of Urbandale, director of health promotions for the association’s Iowa chapter, says schools can apply now to become a part of the proven intervention programs.

“Our Vape-Free Schools initiative provides school administrators and educators training to be able to offer an alternative suspension approach for students that are caught vaping, smoking or chewing on school property,” Turner says. “This also includes a voluntary vaping and tobacco cessation program for youth who are wanting to quit.” Now more than ever, Turner says schools need support in helping students to quit tobacco products.

“We’re seeking to raise funds to give schools across the country access to these programs,” Turner says. “There’s a cost of $400 per training seat, so our goal is to raise $400,000 to serve 1,000 schools in need by the end of 2021.” While the number of adult smokers in Iowa has remained steady or fallen slightly in recent years, the number of young people vaping and using other tobacco products is quickly rising.

“In Iowa, we see our high school tobacco use rates at an alarming 22.7%,” Turner says. “This is higher than our adult rates for smoking and we see on a national basis nearly one in five teens are vaping and close to one in four teens are using at least one tobacco product.” One of the Lung Association’s teen smoking/vaping cessation programs is called NOT, for Not On Tobacco. The 10-session program offers teens the tools, information and support to end their addiction. Learn more at lung.org.

(Radio Iowa) – A delegation of 60 Iowans will be traveling to our sister nation of Kosovo in southeastern Europe later this month. Among those chosen for the trip is Joe Nelson, the superintendent of the Clarion Goldfield Dows Community School District or C-G-D in Wright County.  Nelson says, “Our goal with the country of Kosovo is to start that international partnership and international learning so that we get some students from Kosovo to come over and embrace everything that we love about CGD.”

Agriculture is an important industry both in Iowa and Kosovo and Nelson says the students in his district will be great ambassadors for Iowa. “One in six kids in our high school are involved in FFA and the roots of ag run deep in Clarion, 4H started here,” Nelson says. “We’ve had some highly successful kids who have graduated from here and gone on to great careers in ag, so why not open that up to the world.” The city administrator of Fort Dodge and the mayors of several Iowa cities will also be a part of the delegation.

“General Orr from the National Guard is leading the delegation,” Nelson says. “We’ll be going over to the country of Kosovo for about a week. The clay is still wet on this project but what an exciting project to be a part of and what a cool partnership opportunity for our students.” The trip is scheduled for September 23rd through October 2nd. Iowa has had a sister state relationship with Kosovo since 2013 when then-Iowa Governor Terry Branstad signed an agreement with that country’s president.

(Radio Iowa) – World War Two veterans from Iowa and across the nation are being honored by participating on a flight aboard a biplane. It is all part of what is known as “Dream Flight”. Darryl Fisher says it started when he helped his dad fly his refurbished biplane from Mississippi to Oregon in 2011. “So I thought we’ve got to make 15 gas stops, so why see if there is a World War Two veteran at a local facility on our gas stop and we’ll just give them a quick flight and see what happens. And it was amazing. So we gave our first Dream Flight on March 29, 2011. We gave 25 dream flights on the way back,” he says. He says they have now given 46-hundred flights in 10 years.

“Our mission is to give back to those who gave. This generation gave us our freedom, this generation gave us our freedom. We can’t thank them enough for that,” Fisher says. Fisher says the biplane used for the “Dream Flights” helped prepare those we were going to war. “This biplane had one mission. They were built between 1940 and 1945 and they were designed to teach pilots to fly in World War Two, that was it,” he says. He says they decided to change things up this fall in honor of the end of World War Two, which came in August.

“In 1945 they signed the surrender agreement with Japan. So we said hey, let’s start flying August 1, we’ll finish flying on September 30, and we’ll call it Operation September Freedom. We’ll take our six airplanes and barnstorm across the country and fly as many World War Two veterans as we can in 60 days,” according to Fisher. Each flight is about 20 minutes. Upon completion of the flight, the World War II veterans are presented with a cap, thanked for their service to their country, and are asked to sign their name on the tail of the airplane.

Dream Flight flew veterans in Le Mars and Sioux City last week, and they are scheduled to honor other World War II veterans at Vinton and Ottumwa today (Monday) and Moline, Illinois on Tuesday.

(Hampton, Iowa) – Officials with the Hampton Police Department report an arrest was made Sunday, following an investigation into the death in August, 2020, of a 23-month old boy. Authorities say Jhonny Junior Salvatore Suarez Rivera was arrested Sunday, Sept. 5th, 2021, and charged with 1st Degree Murder, as well as Child Endangerment Resulting in Death. He was being held in the Franklin County Jail.

Jhonny Junior Salvatore Suarez Rivera

On Saturday, Aug. 1st, 2020, at around 3:45-p.m., the child was taken by private vehicle to the Franklin General Hospital, in Hampton. Life-saving measures were taken, bu the child died a little over an hour later. An autopsy conducted August 3rd, 2020, determined the child’s cause of death was multiple blunt force injuries and the manner of death was ruled a homicide.

Rivera was identified as a caretaker of the child and suspect in the death through an investigation conducted by the Hampton Police Department with assistance from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.