The Taylor County Sheriff’s Office reports this (Friday) morning, 51-year old David Long, of Bedford, was arrested in the 600 block of Court Avenue in Bedford, on an active Taylor County warrant for delivery of a controlled substance. A subsequent search warrant was executed on the residence, resulting in Long being charged with possession of a controlled substance with the intent to deliver. Authorities say 51-year old Lorretta Marecale, of Bedford, was also charged. Both Long and Marecale are being held at the Taylor County Jail without bond, pending an appearance with a magistrate

“Take Back Bridgewater” founder Doug Miller has announced a Public Forum and Potluck dinner will take place this Sunday, June 10th, at the Bridgewater Activity Center. Doors open at 4:30-p.m., with the Potluck at 5, and the Forum getting underway at 6:30-p.m.  Beverages and glasses will be provided. You’re asked to bring your own table service (plates, silverware, napkins).

Nationally recognized speakers Frank and Kim Spillers, with Global Horizons, will share and discuss their 30-years of experience and ideas to help grow the population of the tiny community, create jobs and new businesses, while increasing wealth and reducing poverty, and keeping youth in the area. Everyone, not just the citizens of Bridgewater, is welcome to attend the potluck and forum. There is no cost to attend, but donations will be accepted, and fundraiser items will be available. “Takeback Bridgewater” a grassroots community-based initiative, was founded in Feb., 2017, with a mission of working in partnership with citizens to address criminal activity and improve the quality of life in and around Bridgewater. Since then, there have been numerous community meetings, including one featuring Congressman David Young and other notable individuals.

More information can be found at “Take Back Bridgewater, Iowa,” on Facebook. Or, call/text Doug Miller at 641-745-5108.

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A $25 million complex proposed for West Des Moines would include indoor space for youth and adult hockey and soccer. West Des Moines City Manager Tom Hadden told The Des Moines Register the number of indoor facilities to meet the demand is lacking. There are three ice rinks and two indoor soccer fields in the metropolitan area.

The Iowa Soccer Association and the Iowa Ice Sports Foundation are working with the city and an unnamed corporate sponsor to pay for and build the complex on 60 acres (24 hectares) of farmland. Hadden says the city is expecting to pay about 60 percent of the project’s $25 million price tag, with the rest coming from the unnamed corporate sponsor and other donors.

Police in Red Oak arrested a man Thursday night, for Disorderly Conduct. Weston Price Jespersen, of Red Oak, was taken into custody at around 8:45-p.m. in the 300 block of W. Washington Avenue. He was brought to the Montgomery County Law Enforcement Center, and held on a $300 cash bond.

Anita Rescue and Wiota 1st Responders were called to the 65-mile marker of Interstate 80 westbound at around 4:40-a.m. today for a car versus semi-tractor trailer accident. A female in a Hyundai Sonata was trapped in the vehicle and extrication was requested. A medical helicopter was also dispatched to the scene. The woman was said to have suffered head and other, unknown injuries.

Additional information is currently not available.

The 22 women competing to be “Miss Iowa 2018” next week will still be evaluated for their appearances in swimsuits and evening gowns. Changes announced this week to the Miss America competition — like the end of the swimsuit competition — will be in place for the NEXT round of state and local pageants. Racheal Vopatek is president of the Miss Iowa Competition Board. “Swimsuit going away is a big change and I think there are a lot of mixed feelings out there,” Vopatek says. “We’re all still processing it.”

Miss Iowa 2017 Chelsea Dubczak of Urbandale says change was needed because the swimsuit competition tended to focus on the “physique” of the women, but Dubczak disagrees with eliminating it altogether. “There should still be some component that takes into consideration the lifestyle and the fitness of the title holder so that she can be a positive role model and a good representative in all facets of life,” Dubczak says.

The Miss America organization emphasizes it is a scholarship competition, not a beauty pageant. Dubczak says evaluating how well contestants speak and how well educated they are is important — but she says with obesity and chronic diseases associated with a sedentary lifestyle on the rise, physical fitness is important, too. “Day in and day out, how do you take care of yourself? How do you show people to respect people and admire your body, not just by how it looks, but by how well it functions?” she says.

For the past year, Dubczak has promoted a “Ladies Who Lift” platform, emphasizing weight lifting and other activities that focus on what a woman’s body is capable of doing rather than what it looks like. The opening round of competition among the women vying to be Miss Iowa 2018 starts next Thursday. A winner will be crowned on Saturday, the 16th.

(Radio Iowa)

A film crew from National Geographic has been in Iowa this week, capturing material for a documentary about devastating floods that hit parts of the state in 2008 and 2016. Clarksville Mayor Val Swinton says the seven-person crew spent time in his town, located in Butler County. “It’s a documentary about the changes in the weather and so they wanted to know about the floods and how these two floods, that were so big and happened so close together, represented a change in our weather pattern,” Swinton said.

In September 2016, nearly 300 Clarksville residents were forced out their homes when torrential rains pushed the Shell Rock River over a temporary levee. This month marks the 10-year anniversary of the 2008 flood that buried much of Eastern Iowa under water – including Clarksville.

“We just had a 500-year flood in 2016 and one in 2008, which for us, means the next 500-year flood might not be 500 years from now. We might have another one in the not too distant future,” Swinton said. “Our focus has been to prepare for that, to try to figure out what we can do to keep the Shell Rock River out of Clarksville the next time something like this happens.”

Clarksville has rebuilt and recovered from the 2016 flood, according to Swinton, but there are lingering effects on the town’s residents. “It was a pretty powerful event and so people now every time we get a forecast of heavy rain we wonder if maybe we’re going to get flooded again,” Swinton said. “It kind of puts everyone on edge a little bit.”

The National Geographic documentary featuring Clarksville and other Iowa cities is expected to be released this fall.

(Radio Iowa)

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press at 3:40 a.m. CDT

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — For a Republican Party that celebrates capitalism and the American dream of building wealth, the GOP’s initial line of attack against the new Iowa Democratic nominee for governor appears a bit out of character. Fred Hubbell, a former life insurance executive whose family wealth in Des Moines dates back to the mid-1800s, won the Democratic nomination Tuesday. Gov. Kim Reynolds and party leaders were quick to question how voters could trust a candidate who was born into a rich family.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa judge has found that Iowa cannot deny two transgender women Medicaid coverage for sex reassignment surgery declaring the state’s policy denying their care violates the Iowa Constitution and the state’s civil rights law. Carol Ann Beal of northwest Iowa and EerieAnna Good of the Quad Cities in eastern Iowa filed the lawsuit last year after their Medicaid provider and Iowa Department of Human Services denied surgery requests recommended by doctors.

CEDAR FALLS, Iowa (AP) — A state audit has found nearly $7,000 in improper and unsupported payments and undeposited collections at the University of Northern Iowa’s Study Abroad Center. The audit found the problems from July 2011 to June 2014, when the program was run by Yana Cornish. Iowa State Auditor Mary Mosiman says the audit shows $5,768 in payments that did not comply with UNI policies and also found $922 in undeposited collections related to air travel costs that Cornish had paid with university card.

ANKENY, Iowa (AP) — Police in the central Iowa city of Ankeny have identified two people whose bodies were found earlier this week inside a mobile home. Police said in a news release Thursday that autopsies reveal 44-year-old Karen Jayne Edsinga and 45-year-old Lonnie Robert Perry died of gunshot wounds. An autopsy showed Edsinga died of a self-inflicted gunshot and that Perry also died of a gunshot wound. Police say they were unable to determine if Perry’s wound was self-inflicted or at the hands of Edsinga.

The board that governs the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa has approved tuition hikes for the fall semester, but not before one board member blasted the governor and legislators for failing to provide more taxpayer support of the schools.  “The worst state government public attack on our three public universities that I can ever remember.”

That’s Board of Regents member Larry McKibben of Marshalltown, a Republican who served 12 years in the Iowa Senate. “We are taking three great public universities downhill,” he said.

For students who are residents of Iowa, fall semester tuition will be three-point-eight percent higher at Iowa and Iowa State.Tuition rates for U-N-I students who are Iowa residents will go up two-point-eight percent this fall. Late Thursday morning, the Board of Regents unanimously approved those increases, along with tuition hikes for out-of-state students attending the three universities. McKibben was the only member of the board to comment before the vote was taken.

“I’m going to vote for this and I’m going to support it, but I think one of the things I’m trying to say to the State of Iowa and the citizens of Iowa is this: ‘We have to do better in the support of these universities,'” McKibben said. A lack of state government support has made this a “very, very difficult time” at the three public universities, according to McKibben. “Great faculty and staff and researchers at our universites are being picked off by states all over the nation,” McKibben said.

The former legislator predicts state support of higher education will be a “major item” debated in the fall campaign. “I understand political talk, because I spent the time doing it, but there’s a difference between talking the talk and walking the walk,” McKibben said. “…If we are going to have economic growth, we have to have economic growth with the great students that come through our universities that stay in Iowa.”

McKibben predicts more Iowa, Iowa State and U-N-I graduates will take jobs out-of-state to pay off the student debt that’s growing because of increased tuition costs. And McKibben warns there will more significant tuition hikes in the future if the governor and legislators do not boost state support of the three universities.

(Radio Iowa)

Iowans are being warned about a couple of new scams that target Facebook users. Jim Hegarty, with the Better Business Bureau in Omaha/Council Bluffs, says to be very wary if you get a message that appears to be from the founder of the social media giant. “First, people are contacted by people claiming to be Mark Zuckerburg or other senior executives, telling them they’ve won a Facebook lottery,” Hegarty says. “Victims are told some fees are needed to deliver the money and victims who pay are told there are more fees needed for clarification.”

There is no Facebook lottery. While getting a message from Zuckerburg should send up a red flag for most of us, we would tend to be much more trusting if the message is from someone we know. That’s the hinge of the other new scam. “Victims hear from a Facebook friend, telling them that the friend has won a large amount of money and saying they saw the victim’s name on a list of winners,” Hegarty says. “Of course, these contacts do not come from actual friends though that gives these a strong aura of credibility.”

That “friend” tells the victim to contact a third party to get their winnings, and again, there’s a fee for getting the cash prize but it never arrives. An elderly couple from Fort Calhoun, Nebraska, was drawn into a lottery scheme and recently came forward. Both were in their 80s and were showing signs of early dementia. Several con artists piled onto the couple over two years.

“They were on the hook with scammers that were working them from one end of the country to the other,” Hagerty says. “All kinds of reasons why they could never deliver the winnings. Over the course of those two years, they sent over $150,000 in wire transfers. They ended up losing essentially everything. Their life savings were gone.”

Nationwide last year, the BBB took 150-thousand complaints from consumers reporting scams. The estimated loss to victims is 117-million dollars, but Hegarty says that amount could be ten times higher as many people don’t report being ripped off.

(Radio Iowa)