This Saturday is the deadline for nominations for the Community Hero Award for Iowans who have gone above and beyond to strengthen families while preventing child abuse. Deb Cox, executive director of Prevent Child Abuse Iowa, says up to ten people will be singled out for the awards statewide. Cox says, “The purpose of this award is to really recognize the people who are working at the local, community level on a daily basis, working to change and improve the lives of our children and families.”

The winners will be recognized during the annual Child Abuse Prevention and Family Support Conference which is scheduled for early May at the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines. “The conference has had sell-out registration the past three years and we expect that again this year,” Cox says. “We take up to 600 registrants for the conference. It’s three days of training and networking and skill building.”

This Saturday, April 1st, marks the start of Child Abuse Prevention Month in Iowa, with a goal of informing the public about the problem. “Child abuse is an ongoing problem and it has been for eons,” Fox says. “The work of prevention is to build the strength at the local community level, to be able to recognize the signs and symptoms of families at risk and then support those families so abuse doesn’t occur in the first place.” C

Cox says statistics on child abuse in Iowa for 2016 will be released in a few weeks. In recent years, she says cases of physical and sexual abuse have remained steady statewide while neglect cases have risen. Learn more and find nomination forms for the Community Hero Award at: www.pcaiowa.org

A report issued this week claims Iowa is the best state in the country to be a doctor. Analysts with the personal-finance website WalletHub say they examined data that included average annual salaries of physicians and hospitals per capita. Scott McIntyre, spokesperson for the Iowa Hospital Association, says he’s not surprised Iowa topped the list. “Speaking from the hospital perspective, I think our hospitals provide doctors with a great place to work,” McIntyre said. “A place where they are respected, where they have opportunities for leadership, and where health care is done in a patient-first environment.”

Iowa has 118 hospitals. The WalletHub report claims physicians in this state are paid the fourth highest average wage, when adjusted for the cost of living. “The competition for physicians is stiff throughout the nation and throughout the world,” McIntyre said. “It’s a very tough market out there, so Iowa…has its work cut out for it to attract the best physicians possible.”

The report also notes Iowa has the sixth most hospitals per capita and the sixth highest insured population rate.

(Radio Iowa)

No injuries were reported, but about $500 in property damage occurred Wednesday evening in Creston, when an axle broke on a 1989 Chevy S-10 pickup. About two-feet of the axle with a bolted on tire rolled about past the pickup and down the street, before striking a 2003 Chevy Blazer that was legally parked in a driveway.

Creston Police say the driver of the pickup, 26-year old Matthew Deane Thompson, of Creston, was traveling south on New York Avenue when the incident happened just before 7-p.m., Wednesday. Thompson’s truck sustained about $700 worth of damage.

No citations were issued.

The area’s top news at 7:06-a.m., w/KJAN News Director Ric Hanson

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (4.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – The world’s oldest and most experienced spacewoman has just set another record, this time for spacewalking. NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson floated out on the eighth spacewalk of her career Thursday morning, 250 miles up at the International Space Station. That’s the most spacewalks ever performed by a woman. Whitson is a southwest Iowa native. She hails from Beaconsfield, in Ringgold County.

Whitson and her spacewalking partner, Shane Kimbrough, need to complete prep work on a docking port. Kimbrough disconnected the port during a spacewalk last Friday. Flight controllers in Houston moved it to a new location Sunday. It will serve as a parking spot for future commercial crew capsules.

Midway through Thursday’s spacewalk, Whitson will surpass the current record for women of 50 hours and 40 minutes of total accumulated spacewalking time.

The 57-year-old Whitson has been in orbit since November.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Polk County Jail inmates are exploring the internet, watching movies and contacting loved ones through a pilot project that gives them access to tablet computers. The Des Moines Register reports that Telmate, a Fruitland, Idaho-based company, is providing 97 tablets free to the jail. The company owns them and collects from three to five cents a minute directly from the inmates’ jail commissary accounts.

The inmates have spent about 30,000 minutes a day since the tablets were distributed to jail cellblocks March 9. The company says studies show the more inmates stay connected, the less likely they are to reoffend. The assistant jail administrator, Cory Williams, says the inmates must follow jail rules if they want to maintain access to the tablets.

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office reports a Pottawattamie County man was arrested Wednesday night in Red Oak, on a valid Pott. County warrant for Probation Violation. 42-year old Justin Wade Woods, of Council Bluffs, was taken into custody at around 7:15-p.m., in the 1500 block of N. Broadway, in Red Oak. He was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on a $5,000 bond.

The Iowa House and Senate have approved a bill that could make it easier for an All-terrain vehicle to get from point A to point B when there’s a public highway in between. A-T-Vs will not be able to join the cars, pick-ups and semis that drive DOWN any “primary” highway in the state if the bill becomes law, but the legislation would let many all-terrain vehicles drive ACROSS a highway. Under current law, city and county officials may get a permit from the state Department of Transportation to establish A-T-V crossings at specific points along a primary highway. This bill does away with that process. Senator Dan Zumbach of Ryan says A-T-V drivers will be able to cross any primary highway in the state under certain circumstances.

“The crossing has to be made at 90 degrees. 2. The ATV is brought to a complete stop before it crosses. 3. The driver yields to all oncoming traffic. 4. The crossing is made at an intersection of the highway and another street or highway and 5. the crossing is made at a street designed for an ATV trail,” Zumbach says. Zumbach says the bill could provide an economic boost to the state.

“This is bringing together many of the ATV trails that have tried to survive and move forward in the state of Iowa,” Zumbach says. “And it’s just one step to make that economy spin even larger.” Representative Scott Ourth, a Democrat from Ackworth, says it could reduce travel time for some farmers, too.

“I know those who haul feed back and forth and now will be able to simply cross the road rather than go some long, circuitous route to get to their feedlot across some road somewhere,” Ourth says. The proposal has cleared the House and the Senate unanimously this month. It’s now up the governor to decide if the bill becomes law.

(Radio Iowa)

Republicans on a House committee have tabled a proposal to ban abortions at about the sixth week of a pregnancy, after the detection of a fetal heartbeat. Instead, Republicans in the Iowa House are pursuing a ban on abortions after the 20th week of a pregnancy, unless the mother’s life or health are endangered. Representative Joel Fry of Osceola, the Republican who leads the House Human Resources Committee: “‘This is the piece of legislation we have consensus on.”  The bill cleared the committee last night with the support of 11 of the 12 Republicans present. Representative Tom Moore of Griswold was the only Republican to vote no.

All eight Democrats in the committee room opposed the bill.Representative Shannon Lundgren, a Republican from Peosta, calls the 20-week ban an “incremental” approach. “This gives us a way to dial back some of the concerns that we have and start saving lives immediately,” Lundgren says. “…We’re still moving pro-life legislation…I think that’s important to remember.”

The committee took an abortion ban that cleared the Senate in mid-March, keeping the 20-week threshold, but removing an exception that would have allowed abortions after 20 weeks if the fetus had a fatal condition. Representative Beth Wessel-Kroeschell, a Democrat from Ames, says there was just too much “push back” against the more restrictive abortion ban, plus under that OTHER bill, parents could have sued their adult daughters for getting an abortion.

“What century do we live in?” Wessel-Kroeschell asked, with a laugh. “So I think the message got out.” The House Human Resources Committee met last (Wednesday) night to debate the proposal. Wessel-Kroeschell led the Democratic opposition. “Although the bill is improved, it is in no way accepted to Iowa, Iowans and Iowa women,” she said. Tom Chapman of the Iowa Catholic Conference says the church had concerns about the now-tabled abortion ban based on when a fetal heartbeat is detected.

“We’re interested in passing a bill that will be effective and has the best chance of standing up in court,” Chapman says. “A 20-week bill has been passed in many different states…and I think that’s a good place for Iowa to start.” Iowans for Life executive director Maggie DeWitte would like to see legislators declare that life begins at conception and that could be basis for a legal challenge of the Roe v Wade decision that legalized abortion.

“However, we don’t have any opposition to incremental change and hope to see something go forward,” DeWitte says. Erin Davison-Rippey of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland says the bill Republicans have now crafted still could endanger in vitro fertilization and outlaw some forms of contraception. “Iowans do not support these extreme measures,” Davison-Rippey says. It’s unclear when this issue may be debated in the full, 100-member House.

(O. Kay Henderson/Radio Iowa)

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — The Iowa Senate is slowing down the confirmation of Geri Huser as the Iowa Utilities Board chairwoman after The Associated Press revealed her extensive private legal work. Members of the Senate commerce committee had been scheduled Tuesday afternoon to consider Huser’s appointment for a second two-year term as board chairwoman. But they pulled her from the calendar after the AP reported that she has maintained a busy law practice on the side.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A tiger at the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines has died of cancer. The Des Moines Register reports that the 6-year-old Siberian tiger named Max died March 21. Zoo spokesman Ryan Bickel says Max showed signs of illness in late February. A necropsy performed at Iowa State University identified lymphoma, a type of cancer, as the cause of Max’s illness and death.

KEOKUK, Iowa (AP) — Supervisors in southeastern Iowa’s Lee County have approved a minimum wage increase, even after state lawmakers passed a bill that would ban local governments from increasing the minimum hourly wage. The Hawk Eye reports that Lee County supervisors voted 4-1 Tuesday to raise the county’s minimum wage to $8.20 an hour _ 95-cents above the current minimum of $7.25 an hour.