(Radio Iowa) – Former Vice President Mike Pence plans to visit each of Iowa’s 99 counties before the Iowa Caucuses early next year and he’s making stops in western Iowa over the next couple of days.

Pence will make stops in Sioux Center, Le Mars, Sioux City, Holstein and Neola this week and he’ll be back in Iowa next week to appear along with several other candidates at an event hosted by The Family Leader. Pence’s next opportunity to reach a nationwide audience is likely the first televised debate for G-O-P candidates in August. Pence’s campaign has not yet indicated he’s met the fundraising threshold to qualify for the debate, but during an interview with Radio Iowa yesterday (Tuesday), Pence indicated he will be on the debate stage.

Pence visited Ukraine late last week and he told Ukraine’s president the U-S will support his country until victory over Russia is achieved.

Pence says he understands the concern of many Americans that the war has stretched into its 16th month, but Pence says the Biden Administration has been slow in providing the military hardware Ukraine needs for its fight.

Before he was vice president, Pence served one term as Indiana’s governor. He appointed one of the Indiana Supreme Court justices who ruled last week that Indiana’s 2022 abortion ban doesn’t violate the state’s constitution.

Pence says that means presidential candidates who are elected by the American people should support a federal law on abortion. He’s called for a nationwide ban on abortion after the 15th week of pregnancy.

Pence has also called for entitlement reform. As an Indiana congressman in 2005, Pence supported President George W. Bush’s plan to let younger workers invest payroll taxes for Social Security in private savings accounts instead, but the Republican-led congress never took a vote on the idea. Pence says 15 years later, Americans understand the trajectory of the national debt must be addressed.

Pence says polling data shows Gen Xers and Millenials “would be very open” to the kind of changes he’s discussing. A survey conducted for a financial services company two years ago found 83 percent of Americans born between 1965 and 1985 believe Social Security will run out of money in their lifetimes.

Pence says raising the retirement age for Social Security should be considered, but any changes should be phased in. He also says there should be no changes for those who are 25 years away from the current retirement age for Social Security and Medicare.

Per The American Legion, Harlan’s fireworks will be postponed until tomorrow July 5th due to the potential incoming weather threat. Fireworks will take place at the same time and location.

(Atlantic, Iowa) – Atlantic Fire Chief Tom Cappel reports the City of Atlantic’s Fireworks Show for tonight has been postponed due to the expected wet and possibly stormy weather. The decision to postpone the event was made by Cappel, Mayor Grace Garrett, and a representative from Wild Willy’s Fireworks.

A date for show has not yet been rescheduled.

(Radio Iowa) – Even with all of the satellite mapping technology on our smartphones, some Iowans still enjoy having the old-school paper road maps in their vehicle’s glove box. The 2023-2024 edition of the Iowa Transportation Map is now available. Mark Hansen, a transportation planner with the Iowa DOT, says the new edition has a host of changes from last year. “This year, we got the 2020 Census changes in for the populations of the cities in Iowa,” Hansen says, “so that involved changing hundreds of hundreds of populations for the cities.”

The map shows all of Iowa’s highways, airports, railroad lines, lakes, rivers, and major county roads. Smaller detail maps are also included for the state’s 16 largest cities which identify highways, major streets, and city boundaries. “We have some new roadways across Iowa. We have the US 30 four-lane east of Tama. We have US 61 four-lane north of Burlington,” Hansen says. “We’ve got several interchanges that were built this last year, so we reflected those correctly on that new transportation map.”

The map includes a chart to find mileage between select Iowa cities along with an index listing all of the cities shown on the map, along with their populations and their map locations. “New transportation maps are available at the rest areas, the welcome centers, driver’s license stations across the state,” Hansen says. “It’s also available online at iowadot.gov/maps.”

There’s also a link to a mobile app version available at the same website. The maps are printed every two years and they’re free.

(Radio Iowa) – Former Vice President Mike Pence walked in Urbandale’s 4th of July parade today (Tuesday) and will campaign in western Iowa over the next three days. Pence plans to visit each of Iowa’s 99 counties before the Iowa Republican Party’s Caucuses early next year. “One of the things I’ve learned traveling the nation over the last two years is that I’m well known, but I don’t think we’re known well,” Pence said. “Most Americans know me as a loyal lieutenant standing beside the president right up until my oath to the Constitution required me to do otherwise, but the story of our family, the story of our service, the story of a family that’s lived the American dream, that I’ve been a champion of the conservative movement all my life — that’s a story I’ll look forward to telling on the debate stage and in all 99 counties of Iowa before we get to that Caucus.”

Pence, who held his presidential campaign kick-off in Iowa last month, spoke with Radio Iowa this (Tuesday) morning and shared that his first parade appearance was in 1964. “My mother took a picture of us actually on a float for Barry Goldwater on his float for president when I was a toddler, but I have no memory of that,” Pence said, with a laugh. “…I would tell you the opportunity to be back on the street, shaking hands, greeting people, celebrating Independence Day, waving ‘Old Glory’ and cheering on the incredible progress our country has made through all these so many years is something that I cherish.”

Pence will make stops in Boone, Sioux Center, Le Mars, Sioux City, Holstein and Neola over the next few days and he’ll be back in Iowa next week to appear along with several other candidates at an event hosted by The Family Leader.

(Radio Iowa) – There are now two R-S-V vaccines approved by the F-D-A to protect people 60 and older from serious cases of the illness. Doctor Vanessa Ogundipe) of MercyOne in Sioux City says R-S-V is an upper respiratory virus.”For most people it’s very benign, causes mild symptoms such as coughing sneezing and kind of runny nose. But in infants and older adults and patients who are have lots of chronic medical conditions it can cause severe illness,” she says. Ogundipe says the two vaccines will soon be available.

“But the first one that was approved was G-S-K’s Arexvy (Uh-rex-vee), and it’s been approved for adults six years and older. So it works by preventing severe R-S-V or prevents severe lower respiratory tract infection in that age group,” Ogundipe says. “And then there’s a second vaccine Pfizer’s Abrysvo (Uh-breeze-voh, that’s also approved for adults 60 years and older.” She says Arexvy is a little different than Abrysvo.

“It boosts the body’s immune response. When you take it you’ll get more of an immune response which should help you protect yourself better,” she says. “And then the Pfizer R-S-V vaccine Abryso protects against both R-S-V A and B.” The vaccines are just need the D-D-C’s approval before they are distributed nationwide. She says there is also an R-S-V vaccine in the works for pregnant women that is hoped to be able to prevent the disease in their newborns.

(Radio Iowa) – An Iowa State University study is expanding on recent advisories from the American Psychological Association and the U-S surgeon general that found the more people use social media, the lower their psychological wellbeing. Ella Faulhaber is a P-H-D student in human computer interaction at I-S-U and she’s the lead author of the study. “Social media is really prevalent nowadays,” Faulhaber says. “If you’re on a college campus, you ride the bus, you might be one student who doesn’t a have phone buried in their faces. Social media is really everywhere so we wanted to come up with a strategy in order to improve people’s wellbeing when it comes to social media usage.”

Faulhaber offers some suggestions for cutting back on social media usage, and they start with creating an awareness. “Most people don’t even know how much they’re using social media, so you can set a timer on your phone,” Faulhaber says. “There are many built-in wellness apps, you can become aware if you use it. And then also give yourself grace, so really understand that the design and the character of social media platforms is to keep you engaged, keep your attention, keep you scrolling.” Faulhaber notes, it can be very difficult to adhere to time limits in an effort to trim your screen time.

“Just don’t give up,” she says. “Our study has shown it is doable. Loneliness, depression, anxiety all go down once you use your phone less, once you use social media less.” The I-S-U study found college students who cut their social media use to 30 minutes per day scored significantly lower for anxiety, depression, loneliness and fear of missing out at the end of a two-week experiment, when compared to the control group.

(Radio Iowa) – State Treasurer Roby Smith says it may be time to raise the amount of money that can be deposited in College Savings Iowa accounts each year. “Obviously I have to have the legislature and the governor sign off on that, but that’s something that we’re going to be looking at next session,” Smith says. “We wanted to get in office, do a deep dive January through December and then we’ll introduce a bill that’s going to take some of these recommendations that we have and then we’ll leave it up to the legislature to make that decision.”

Smith was elected state treasurer last November and has been in office nearly six months. His office oversees the College Savings Iowa program which lets individuals make deposits in an account for a future or current student and withdrawals are not taxed at the federal level. If you’re an Iowa resident, withdrawals aren’t subject to the Iowa income tax either. The current limit on yearly contributions is 37-hundred-85 dollars. “It’s always moving because every year it indexes to inflation,” Smith says. “What I want to do is look to take a jump up from that. I don’t have an amount right now, but let’s just say maybe we shoot for $5000 and then start indexing it from there, but college has gone up much that it’s outpaced inflation.”

Lawmakers established College Savings Iowa in 1998 when the average cost for tuition and fees at a public university in the U-S was 32-hundred dollars. It’s now more than nine-thousand dollars a year. State records indicate there are more than 100-thousand College Savings Iowa accounts.

(Radio Iowa) – The U-S-D-A’s weekly report on Iowa crops shows 61 percent of the state’s corn is rated good or excellent, a slight improvement from last week and soybean conditions rose to 53 percent good or excellent. The southern third of Iowa had above average rainfall last week. Topsoil moisture levels statewide are 17 percent very short and the subsoil ratings are even drier.

Last Thursday’s Drought Monitor shows parts of two counties in northwest and southwest Iowa are in extreme drought and in southeast Iowa, extreme drought conditions are reported in all or parts of seven counties.

(Radio Iowa) – An expert at the University of Iowa’s Driving Safety Research Institute says automated driving will work the best when the strengths of humans and automation are used together. Institute deputy director, Omar Ahmad, says tasks that are redundant are one example. “Humans are our not great at doing the same thing over and over, over a very long time period. Our minds wander, we tend to get distracted, we tend to get bored. We tend to want to do multiple things such as, for instance, use our phones to get something else done while we’re driving,” he says.

He says automation is best at these types of tasks. “Automation and sort of computers in general they are they don’t get tired, they can do the same thing over and over, and they’re not going to take a nap, and they’re not going to get bored,” Ahmad says. Humans are better at making decisions about new things they encounter. “Taking a situation that is very unique. And even a situation that perhaps you barely encounter, or that they haven’t encountered, and more or less figuring out how to deal with it. Humans are really good at that,” he says.

Automation has to rely on what has been programmed into it, so those unique situations cause problems. “Automation and computers and software is terrible at that, because it will only do what is programmed to do. And so anytime it sees a situation that has never seen before, it’s not going to know what to do,” Ahmad says. He says if you were to put the strengths of both the human and the automation together, then you have something that’s very compelling. “What we want to see is really a greater recognition of where things are working well, and where things are not working well. And then to remind everybody that look for a driverless type of solution, we’re going to need to be able to do to really deal with these very unique scenarios,” Ahmad says.

He recently completed work on a study of using of how to make an automated vehicle safely navigate on Iowa’s rural roads. Ahmad says it will take some time to work out automated travel on the country’s roadways.