(Radio Iowa) – A Cedar Valley community college has opened a robotics and automation center geared toward developing specialized skills for manufacturing jobs. Hawkeye Community College’s Automation and Robotics Center was five years in the making. The center, located in a refurbished Waterloo John Deere factory, hopes to train high school graduates in automated manufacturing technologies. Center director Kent Wolfe says he’s seen the need for the Cedar Valley manufacturing labor force firsthand. “There’s a tremendous need for more workers to fill those jobs,” Wolfe says, “but even more importantly, workers that have these skills to work in smart manufacturing.” The center has transitioned from a high school curriculum to a fully-fledged, three-semester adult learning program in just five years.

Thirty percent of participating area high schoolers went on to continue training in the manufacturing sector during those five years. Wolfe says that engagement with high schools laid the groundwork for the center and the future of area manufacturing. “That was kind of to fill an immediate need and to get that started in the high schools,” Wolfe says, “but we’re really focused on the current workforce, and that’s going to be our longer-term focus.”

This fall marks the first for the center’s adult-oriented curriculum.

(Red Oak, Iowa) – A traffic stop near Highway 48 and Ratliff Road in Red Oak, resulted in the arrest of a woman from Pottawattamie County. Red Oak Police report 48-year-old Amy Pearl Hunter, of Council Bluffs, was pulled over at around 2:08-a.m. today (Monday). Upon further investigation, Hunter was arrested for having a suspended license through Iowa, with 17 withdrawals in effect. She was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on a $491.25 bond.

(Hampton, Iowa) – A collision Sunday afternoon in northern Iowa’s Franklin County resulted in a fatality and one person being injured. The Iowa State Patrol reports the crash occurred at around 3:20-p.m. near Hampton. A 2007  Columbia golf cart operated by 84-year-old Robert Norman Irwin, of Hampton, was stopped at Highway 65 on 170th Street, and failed to yield the right-of-way to a 2023 Harley Davidson motorcycle, operated by 54-year-old Corey William Spear, of Hampton.

As the golf cart began crossing east-to-west, it was struck by the motorcycle in the northbound lane of traffic on Highway 65. Robert Irwin died from his injuries at the Franklin General Hospital. Spear was injured and transported to the hospital for treatment.

The crash remains under investigation.

(Radio Iowa) – The president and C-E-O of the Interfaith Alliance says religion can be a positive force in our democracy, but only if there’s equality for all religious traditions. Reverend Paul Brandeis Raushenbush has been the national leader of the Interfaith Alliance for about a year.

“My message to Iowa is…will these policies being put forth benefit everyone from every religious tradition, from every racial background, from every gender and sexuality?” he asks. “Can we really talk about equality in Iowa and what kinds of policies will get us there?” Raushenbush will speak Thursday afternoon at a “Challenging Christian Nationalism” forum at a Des Moines church.

“The country is in a turning point, a crisis point,” he says, “and I feel very called to it.” Two Iowa based evangelical Christian groups have recently hosted forums featuring most of the top Republicans who’re running for president. Raushenbush says the Interfaith Alliance offers a different vision about the role of religion in society.

“No one religion under the establishment clause of the First Amendment…should have pre-eminence. That is the genius of America,” he says. “We are a nation for all religions, not just some and that people will be trying to figure out how we can deal with one another with the utmost respect regardless of background, specifically in regards to religious background.”

Raushenbush, who grew up in Wisconsin, is an ordained American Baptist minister who was the associate dean of religious life at Princeton. He’s also the founder of a religious column on the HuffPost website.