More State and area news from KJAN News Director Ric Hanson.

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(Radio Iowa) — Iowans are warned to think before they click if they see a familiar celebrity like Oprah or Ellen on a pop-up ad, pitching products for skin care, losing weight or boosting memory. Jim Hegarty, C-E-O of the Better Business Bureau in Omaha-Council Bluffs, says many of those ads are scams and they’re rigged to rope you in. “People don’t read the fine print even if the fine print is there,” Hegarty says. “They think they’re just getting a week’s trial or a month’s trial and all they have to do is pay for shipping, but when they pay for that shipping, they’re agreeing to have that product shipped to them month after month and have those charges reoccur on their cards.”

The con artists who produce the pop-ups don’t really have the endorsement of the celebrity you see, he says, and more scams seem to appear as fast as they’re being shut down. “They’re like Whack-a-mole,” Hegarty says. “Most of them are operating out of Florida, there’s been some FTC action and a couple of these operations were shut down, but here’s the deal: because individual loss might be $180 or $200, there’s not any individuals that are losing hundreds of thousands of dollars.” Whatever amount you may have lost on the worthless products, Hegarty says it’s important to let the authorities know, as well as the nearest office of the Better Business Bureau. “We want them to report it to the BBB because we can compile that data and when state or local losses get to a certain threshold, then the government can take action,” he says.

Hagerty says this type of scam is estimated to have bilked Americans out of $1.3 billion in the past ten years.

DUBUQUE, Iowa (AP) — Authorities say a man stole nearly $37,000 from his mother while they lived in a smelly Dubuque residence filled with trash. Dubuque County court records say 35-year-old Michael Woods is charged with dependent adult abuse. The records don’t list the name of an attorney who could comment for him. Woods’ preliminary hearing is scheduled for Friday. The Telegraph Herald reports that police say Woods and his 75-year-old mother, Barbara Gebhardt, had been living as squatters in the lower level of a residence that had been owned by a woman who died in February 2017.

Officers sent to check the residence found Gebhardt in a room that was filled with trash and junk and smelled of “mold, rotting garbage, feces and urine.” She was taken to a hospital.

The area’s latest and/or top news stories at 7:06-a.m. From KJAN News Director Ric Hanson

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Sheriff Kevin Aistrope reports that early this morning the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office received a report of theft from the Pilot Travel Center. Upon deputies arrival the subjects had fled the scene and left the car they were operating on the side of the road after striking something and making the vehicle inoperable. A short time later Deputies located the three subjects, two of whom were juveniles. During the investigation 18 year old Cameron Peters of Lincoln, NE was found to be in possession of a controlled substance and drug paraphernalia. All three subjects were transported to the Law Enforcement center where Peters was being held on a $1,300 bond. The two juveniles were cited into court and released to guardians.

Cameron Peters

(Radio Iowa) — The employees of six county jails in Iowa are being praised for going “above and beyond” the minimum state standards for those facilities. Delbert Longley, the chief jail inspector for the Iowa Department of Corrections, selected the six county jails as 2018 “Best of the Best” award winners. “I inspect 106 facilities every year. The vast majority of them do a tremendous job of making sure they are doing the right things and they never get recognized for that,” Longley said. “They’re just kind of like the red-headed stepchild out there…nobody wants to talk about them until, all-of-the sudden, something bad happens.”

Delbert Longley presents award to Shelby County authorities.

The awards were recently handed out at an annual banquet held by the Iowa State Sheriffs and Deputies’ Association. The six jails are located in Madison, Shelby, Iowa, Sioux, Dubuque and Marshall counties. Longley commended all six for being responsive to the needs of inmates. “They treat them with respect and (the jail staff) demand respect in return,” Longley explained. “We know the individuals who are (in jail) have been charged with something, otherwise they wouldn’t be there, but that doesn’t mean they should be treated as second-class citizens.”  The jails also scored high marks for cleanliness. “I don’t care how new or how old of a facility you have, I don’t believe there’s any reason why it should be dirty. I will cite that quickly,” Longley said. “I just don’t want poor living conditions – and not only that, it’s poor working conditions for staff.”

Another priority for Longley is making sure the county employees keep “thorough and complete” records of all jail proceedings. “The documentation is what’s going to keep a lot of jails out of lawsuits. If you can show what you’ve done, when, and why you’ve done it – that is very, very important,” Longley said. According to Longley, administrators and employees of many county jails face substantial challenges including limited budgets, overcrowding, and facilities that are badly in need of replacement or repair. There are several county jails in Iowa that were built in the early 1900s.
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The 2018 “Best of the Best” county jail award winners:
Small jails (up to 25 beds) – Madison and Shelby counties
Medium jails (26-100 beds) – Iowa and Sioux counties
Large jails (over 100 beds) – Dubuque and Marshall counties

(Radio Iowa) — Hundreds of Iowa high school students may lose access to required foreign language classes if lawmakers don’t provide a cash infusion to a state-run initiative. The program is called “Iowa Learning Online” and Iowa Department of Education director Ryan Wise uses the shorthand “I-LO” when discussing it. “It is virtually impossible to get the fees and the demand at a point where ILO pays for itself,” Wise says. The program was launched six years ago with an annual budget of one-and-a-half million dollars in state tax money. That funding ended three years ago and schools are now charged 260 dollars for each online course offered to each student. Once the fees went into effect, enrollment dropped by 40 percent and Wise says federal funding to supplement those fees is no longer available. “Really, without a state appropriation at this point, there’s not a sustainable path forward,” Wise says.

That’s especially critical for students in rural Iowa, according to Wise. Nearly 75 percent of the Iowa Learning Online courses being taken now are foreign languages. “So if (Iowa Learning Online) were to go away after this year, what you see is a big gap in opportunities, especially for rural schools that may struggle to get that world language teacher, that Spanish teacher or French teacher to come in,” Wise says. “We’re able to offer French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Japanese — all online and so this really meets a need in our schools.”

Wise says about 17-hundred Iowa high school students are enrolled in the program’s online courses for THIS school year. He’s asking the legislature and governor to provide half a MILLION dollars in state tax dollars so the program can continue in the next school year.

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press at 3:45 a.m. CST

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Instead of issuing a ticket, two Iowa sheriff’s deputies have treated a woman to a Christmas shopping spree after pulling her over. Television station KCCI reports that the deputies pulled the woman over for not having license plates. Reserve Deputy Rod Eilander says the woman was on her way to borrow $10 to buy dinner for her kids. Instead of giving her a ticket, the deputies bought her children Christmas gifts.

MASON CITY, Iowa (AP) — Police say tips have picked up on the 1995 disappearance of Iowa news anchor Jodi Huisentruit after she was featured on CBS’ “48 Hours.” Mason City Police Chief Jeff Brinkley told the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier that police received at least two dozen calls and emails since the Dec. 15 episode. Huisentruit was 27 when she went missing on her way to work at station KIMT in Mason City.

DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) — Food pantries in eastern Iowa and western Illinois are being flooded with milk donations under a federal program to buy and distribute nearly $50 million in dairy products to compensate farmers hurt by trade tariffs. River Bend Foodbank CEO Mike Miller tells the Quad-City Times about 80,000 half-gallons of milk will be distributed to pantries across the Quad-City region until March. Donations are intended to help farmers hurt by President Donald Trump’s disputes with Mexico, China and Canada.

GRINNELL, Iowa (AP) — A federal board has approved a request by students at Grinnell College to withdraw their request to expand a union representing student workers. The National Labor Relations Board on Friday notified the college and students that a regional director at the agency had approved the withdrawal of the union petition.

(Radio Iowa) — Students from Iowa and several other states will soon be able to pay in-state tuition rates at South Dakota’s public universities. That state’s Board of Regents approved the new policy for the so-called South Dakota Advantage earlier this month. Regents President Kevin Schieffer says there’s already a reciprocity agreement with Minnesota. “Pilot programs have been successful and we’re now applying it to the surrounding states,” Schieffer says. “It has been a positive thing. Not only has it generated more revenue but it also is great for workforce development in South Dakota.”

He says 30-percent of students who go to South Dakota end up joining the state’s workforce upon graduation from college. Schieffer says they have some targets to hit with incoming students from Iowa and the others. “We need to attract another roughly 80 students from those states to break even or do a little better than break even,” he says, “and there’s some confidence we’ll be able to surpass break even.” Schieffer says the expanded policy could help control in-state tuition rates, at least that’s the goal. “This is a calculated business decision,” Schieffer says. “Every dollar we can raise in out-of-state money takes pressure off of tuition increases for the resident rate.”

The new program is for students from Iowa as well as Wyoming, North Dakota, Nebraska and Colorado. The policy begins with the 2019 summer term.

(Radio Iowa) — The Sioux Honey Association Co-op in Sioux City wants Americans to know who their honey comes from and they have launched a national campaign. Co-op chairman Rob Buhmann, says the campaign features the faces and stories of local beekeepers across the country. “it’s our product, we are putting a domestic product on the shelf. We are not doing anything to it to damage it,” Buhmann says.

He says they work hard to make sure they keep up the standards. “We are checking ourselves constantly with testing protocols to make sure that the honey produce, any honey we purchase is what it says it is,” according toe Buhmann. The Sioux Honey Association was established in Sioux City in 1921 to operate based on “what’s best for its beekeepers, its honey and its customers.”