(Red Oak, Iowa) – Montgomery County Engineer Karen Albert, Tuesday, updated the Board of Supervisors on Secondary Roads Department maintenance projects and activities.

Six Secondary Roads Department employees, she said, were undergoing specific training in Atlantic, Tuesday. Albert handed-out to the Board some pictures of the K Avenue Railroad Bridge. Albert received a call last Thursday from the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department, informing her the bridge had been damaged by deep gouges caused by an unknown implement or device.

The railroad owns the K, L and Q Avenue bridges in Montgomery County, and the County is not allowed to conduct any type of maintenance on them. She said “The railroad can choose to close these bridges if they want to. They are the railroad’s bridges…they own the bridges.” She urged the Board to keep that in-mind.

In other business, Karen Albert updated the Supervisors in Montgomery County on the 180th Street precast concrete box culvert project.

She said work on the 250th Street bridge continues, as well. When the 250th Street bridge project is completed, the County plans to hold a dedication ceremony and grand opening.

(Pottawattamie County, Iowa) — Sheriff’s officials in Pottawattamie COunty report Deputies and multiple fire departments were dispatched at around 4:05-p.m., Tuesday, to an accident in the area of Juniper Road and Jasper Lane, near McClelland, that involved a train and a vehicle. When first responders arrived, they discovered the vehicle was occupied by two adults and three juveniles. Authorities say the three juveniles appeared to have been unharmed. The two adults were extricated from the vehicle. Both were transported to the hospital. One of the adults was transported by helicopter ambulance.

As of 9-a.m. today (Wednesday), authorities said they had not received any updates on the condition of the two adults. No one on the train was hurt. Due to the seriousness of the crash, Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Accident investigators responded to the scene. Authorities say the accident remains under investigation.

Agencies assisting at the crash scene included the Underwood, McClelland, Treynor and Lewis Fire Departments, and the Iowa State Patrol.

(Radio Iowa) – The January 15th Iowa Caucuses are just two months away. Iowa G-O-P chairman Jeff Kaufmann says over 10-thousand Republican volunteers will run the more than 16-hundred precinct meetings. “I think there’s the makings for a record setting Caucus here,” Kaufmann says. “A lot of this is anecdotal, of course. There’s no way for sure way to predict this kind of thing, but the energy that we’re hearing, the activity levels of the candidates that are still in the Caucus and I think there’s a general concern about where our country’s heading.”

Nearly 187-thousand Republicans participated in the 2016 Iowa Caucuses, a record. In 2024, Iowa Republican Caucus-goers will follow past practice and simply cast a straw poll ballot and those slips of paper will be counted in the room. Each campaign may have an observer watch the counting. The tallies from each precinct will be reported to the state party and Kaufmann says the results will be posted on a public website.

“It’s going to be as close to real time as we can make it and every single vote will have a paper trail and every single vote can be audited and will be audited within two days,” Kaufmann says. “In fact, in 2016 we got that job done despite a blizzard.” Republican officials at the county level decide what to use for the straw poll ballots and most will be using blank sheets of paper, but Kaufmann says a few will hand Caucus-goers a sheet with candidate names printed on it.

Republicans will be conducting some party business at their Caucuses, but people will be able to leave after casting that straw poll ballot. “And that’s o.k., just so they’re there on January 15,” Kaufmann says. You have to be a registered Republican and vote in person that night.

Iowa Democrats plan to hold in-person Caucuses on January 15th, too, but national party leaders decided South Carolina Democrats will vote first in their party’s presidential nominating process. Iowa Democrats will conduct party business at their 2024 Caucuses and the party has established a mail-in system for presidential preference cards. The results, though, won’t be announced until March.

(Radio Iowa) – U-S Senator Joni Ernst addressed the tens of thousands who gathered at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. for the March for Israel. “Israel, the United States will always have your back,” Ernts said, to cheers. Ernst, a Republican from Red Oak, was part of a bipartisan group preparing to meet in the Middle East to discuss improved relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia when Hamas attacked Israelis who live near Gaza.

“What Iran-backed Hamas perpetrated on October 7th was pure evil and those monsters deserve nothing short of complete and total destruction,” Ernst said, to cheers. Ernst, who met in Israel with victims of the attack three days later, did not directly mention the timing for an aide package for Israel that has not yet made its way through congress, but she told the crowd Republicans and Democrats in the U-S Senate will stand with Israel. She also denounced antisemitism in the U-S.

House Speaker Johnson, House Minority Leader Jeffries and U.S. Senator Ernst on stage at the March for Israel rally on Nov. 14, 2023. (Photo courtesy of Senator Ernst’s office)

“We will not sit quiet,” Ernst yelled, and the crowd cheered before she finished her sentence with, “as antisemitism is being promulgated in classrooms and campuses around the country.” Rally organizers planned the event as a response to protests that have denounced Israel’s actions in Gaza.

(Radio Iowa) – A new report from the American Lung Association shows some improvement in the number of high-risk Iowans who are being screened for lung cancer, but the rate of new lung cancer cases in Iowa is higher than the national average. Kristina Hamilton is advocacy director for the American Lung Association of Iowa  “Iowa still has one of the highest rates of radon in the country,” Hamilton says. “…Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer.”

Iowa ranks 37th among the states in the number of new cancer cases annually. The five-year survival rate for Iowans with lung cancer is nearly two percent lower than the national average. Just over seven percent of Iowans who are at higher risk for lung cancer are being screened.  “Which is significantly higher than the national average of only 4.5%,” Hamilton says. In addition to smoking, having tuberculosis or being exposed to radiation or to chemicals like radon and asbestos raise the risk of developing lung cancer. Exposure to second hand smoke is another risk factor.

A low dose C-T scan produces a detailed picture of lungs and can detect the cancer is its early stages. “Early detection really does save lives,” Hamilton says, “so we want to emphasize awareness about the availability of lung cancer screening and encourage those who are qualify and are high risk to be screened.”

The American Lung Association is urging congress to pass the Increasing Access to Lung Cancer Screening Act. If a doctor recommends a lung cancer screening, the bill would prohibit Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance companies from requiring prior authorization for it. Lung cancer is the second most common cancer among men and women in the U-S — but is by far the leading cause of cancer deaths in the America.

(Creston, Iowa) – Sheriff’s officials in Union County report a car struck a calf on the road Monday night, causing $2,500 damage to the vehicle, but the driver, 30-year-old Mikayla Rayne Nixt, of Creston, was not injured. The accident happened as Nixt was driving a 2009 Chevy Impala southbound on REA Road at around 11:42-p.m.

The calf was struck in the middle of the road near the Dennis Leith residence. Leith owns the calf and responded to the scene. The animal was injured, but still alive. Leith dealt with the calf and got it off the road.

Nixt was able to drive her vehicle home and called the sheriff’s office to inform them of the accident. No citations were issued.