(Creston, Iowa) – Officials with the Creston Police Department say two women were arrested early this (Tuesday) morning, on drug charges. 53-year-old Crystal Alaine Conley, and 38-year-old Heather Layne Green, both of Creston, were arrested at 300 S Lincoln Street, at around 2:15-a.m. Conley was charged with Unlawful Possession of Prescription Drug, Possession of Drug Paraphernalia, and Possession of Controlled Substance/Methamphetamine 1st Offense. Conley was taken to the Union County Jail where she was later released on a $2,300 bond.

Green was charged with Possession Drug Paraphernalia. She was cited and released from the scene, on a promise to appear in court.

Late Monday night, Creston Police arrested 18-year-old Antoine Walter Lillie, of Creston, on charges of Eluding or Attempting to Elude a Law Enforcement Vehicle, and Driving Barred. Lillie was taken to the Union County Jail and held on a $7,000 bond.

DES MOINES, Iowa [KCCI] — Authorities in Des Moines are alerting residents to a significant increase in gun thefts from vehicles, with reports already at around 50 cases halfway through the year. Typically, the police see around 150 stolen gun reports each year, with about a third of these incidents involving thefts from cars and trucks.

Des Moines police are urging gun owners not to leave firearms in their cars. Police Sgt. Paul Parizek underscored the importance of preventing guns from falling into the hands of inexperienced individuals, particularly children, who may not comprehend the consequences of their actions.

While gun owners might not face legal trouble, having a firearm stolen and used in a crime can cause significant headaches.

(UPDATED/Radio Iowa) – An armored animal most people would associate with Texas or Oklahoma is being spotted more frequently in Iowa. Armadillos have been making their way north for decades, according to Jim Coffey, an Iowa D-N-R wildlife biologist. Coffey tells K-C-R-G T-V that armadillo sightings are being tracked by the agency.

“Armadillos are not something that’s new to Iowa,” Coffey says. “We’ve had reports for many, many years, but it’s a species that’s not commonly seen and it kind of falls through the cracks.” For the past several years, Coffey says the D-N-R has been logging sightings of these armored critters anywhere they appear in Iowa.

“We’ve been keeping, you know, good records for the last six years that have indicated about 12 to 24 sightings per year, verifiable across the state,” he says. Armadillos can jump up to four feet into the air and they average about 12 pounds as adults. Coffey says the state’s changing climate played a big part in the arrival of armadillos.

Armadillo — National Park Service photo

“As climate change takes impact, we see that some of our northern boundaries are pushed, or the warmer climates are pushed further north,” he says, “then armadillos will be able to utilize that territory as well.” The DNR has no plans to manage the spread of armadillos, since the only threat they pose to the ecosystem is digging burrows to live in. Plus, they can’t survive harsh winters, so armadillos aren’t established in Iowa — at least not yet.

(Radio Iowa) – An education center in central Iowa is taking steps toward becoming a year-round attraction. Living History Farms spokesperson Elizabeth Sedrel says they are building a Cultivation Center to replace the visitors center and give them more space. “New climate controlled year round exhibit space, some administrative offices and some new accessible amenities like a mother’s room, a family restroom and an adult changing station,” she says. “At the same time, we’re going to be renovating our current visitor center into a dedicated Learning Center for school groups for our classes and our day camp.” The farms were built in Urbandale back in 1970 to preserve some of Iowa’s early agriculture history.

“We have three working farm sites representing the indigenous Ioway in 1700, a pioneer family in 1850, and a farm family in the year 1900, We also have a recreated 1876 town of Walnut Hill,” Sedrel says. There are interactive activities at the farms. “At many of the sites they will meet historic interpreters who can explain what they’re doing and how people lived and work the land at that time,” she says. They recently broke ground to get the project underway. “Happily it does not interfere with guests touring the town or any of the farm sites. Once that building is done then we’ll be able to renovate the current visitor center, and we expect to hold a ribbon cutting for the whole new thing including a new picnic pavilion in 2026,” Sedrel says.

They’ve been raising six-point-two million dollars for the project, and Sedrel says they have hit 85 percent of that goal.

(Radio Iowa) – Officials with the Iowa chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association say they’re thrilled with the announcement of a highly-accurate blood test for the disease that’s now much closer to being widely available. Lauren Livingston, spokeswoman for the association in Iowa, says it would mean a significant shift to simpler, more accurate detection and diagnosis, potentially eliminating current methods that are expensive, invasive, and not always accessible.  “Having a blood test that is around 90% accurate to help identify Alzheimer’s disease is a huge breakthrough,” Livingston says. “We’re just so excited to hopefully, in the near future, see this test be available at the doctor’s office.”

The blood tests, once they’re confirmed and F-D-A-approved, could enhance recruitment for Alzheimer’s clinical trials and slash wait times for Alzheimer’s disease assessments, and treatments to slow the progress of the disease. “It would be so much more accessible for people to be able to get a blood test to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease,” Livingston says, “versus right now, you can do a memory screening, but often you aren’t able to get an official diagnosis unless you have a test, like a PET scan, which is not available in a lot of rural areas in the state and it also can be very expensive.” The report was released Monday at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference, underway in Philadelphia.

The research suggests the blood test could revolutionize the accuracy of diagnosis and provide a cleaner, quicker path to research participation and treatment.  “In Iowa this year, in the legislature, there was a bill that was passed that ensures that all Iowa-funded health insurance does have to cover biomarker testing, like this blood test,” Livingston says, “so it would be covered by Iowa health insurance, so that’s very exciting, too.”

Alzheimer’s is the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States. In Iowa, more than 62,000 people have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or dementia, and there are nearly 100,000 family and friends caring for their loved ones with the disease.

(Radio Iowa) – Governor Kim Reynolds says Iowa’s state-funded Education Savings Accounts for private school students are part of an education revolution happening across the country.  “(It’s) one of the proudest things I’ve done as governor to really work with the legislature and get that done,” Reynolds says, “and the impact that is going to have on our kids.”

Reynolds made her comments at the annual convention of the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC, a conservative think thank that proposes bills for state legislatures. ALEC C-E-O Linda B. Nelson was on stage with Reynolds to discuss what Nelson calls universal education freedom. “You hear this word coming out of Silicon Valley — disrupting. ‘We’re going disrupt this, we’re going to disrupt that.’ I keep thinking the education system needs to be disrupted,” Nelson said. Reynolds replied: “Oh, very much so.” Nelson continued: “And universal (education) freedom is that disruption.”

Reynolds is now co-chair of the “Education Freedom Alliance,” an American Legislative Exchange Council effort to get state-funded education savings accounts set up in 25 states by 2025. Reynolds says an important part of the effort is advertising — like the radio and T-V ads that ran in Iowa back in 2023 before the Iowa legislature passed her proposal. “To really again provide cover for our lawmakers that are working hard,” Reynolds said, “…but you just stay strong, have the resolve to follow it through.”

After two years of failing to get enough Republicans in the legislature to back the concept, Governor Reynolds campaigned against Republican lawmakers who opposed her bill in 2022. “I didn’t take it lightly. I thought about it for a long time before I did it and I was not willing to give up on it,” Reynolds said. “I felt that strongly about it.”

Reynolds influence led to the defeat of four Republicans in G-O-P primaries in 2022 and school choice was her top priority as Reynolds won reelection that November with 58 percent of the vote. “Literally what we did really was we put education freedom on the ballot and I am telling you Iowans responded in a really strong way by large majorities,” Reynolds said.

The governor says her nearly 20 percent margin of victory in 2022 prompted her to abandon the more limited school choice proposals she’d made before. “I was sitting there thinking: ‘Where do we start?’ We started here and…I thought: ‘You know what? We’re going to go for it,'” Reynolds said. “‘We’re not going to get another opportunity like this.'”

The governor’s “Students First Act” was the first bill the Iowa legislature passed in 2023. Over 30-thousand private school students in Iowa have qualified for Education Savings Accounts this year. When fully implemented next fall, Iowa will be among eight states where all private school students are eligible for state funding to cover tuition and other expenses.

(UPDATED by Radio Iowa) – Union Pacific crews are cleaning up the site of a train derailment in Carroll County. A U-P spokesman says about 36 cars derailed last (Monday) night, some two miles east of Glidden. No injuries are reported and an investigation into the incident is underway. Rural Glidden resident Connie Bock says she and her husband have lived about a quarter-mile from the tracks for more than 40 years, so they’re used to hearing all different kinds of train noise, but this was something else entirely.

“We were just watching the Olympics and usually we’ve got a lot of semis and water trailers going by for spring. They make a lot of noise, but this noise kept going and getting louder and then we could feel it in the house,” Bock says. “I decided to go out and look and I came running in and I said, ‘Should I call the police? The train has derailed.'” Bock says the noise of the derailment persisted, lasting for over a minute.

Photo by the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office

“Our dogs started barking and they usually don’t bother with the trains too much,” she says, “but they barked at this.” The derailed cars were not carrying any hazardous materials, but that was not immediately apparent to the Bocks, so they were concerned. The focus now for Union Pacific is to get the mainline operational as quickly as possible. It is not clear how long that may take, but U-P typically has blocked lines up and running within a few days.

Atlantic, IA – The Southwest Iowa Housing Trust Fund (SWIHTF), a non-profit administered by Southwest Iowa Planning Council (SWIPCO), was recently awarded a $125,000 grant from the Iowa West Foundation for 2024, to be used for housing repairs. Officials says SWIPCO was able to leverage the grant funds along with other grant monies, to complete wide ranging housing repairs across the region.

As an example, projects completed in the past year have included a bathroom remodel and plumbing fix, new air conditioning unit and installation, and a foundation repair, just to name a few. Sixteen projects were completed in 2023 with Iowa West funds and SWIPCO has completed or is finishing 44 home repair projects from 2023 funding. The repairs are completed for income qualified recipients and can address both long term and urgent needs.

SWIPCO Community Development Director Erin Hudson described the importance of the funding, saying “Iowa West Foundation grants make immediate differences. They are owner centered, so SWIPCO places the needs of the homeowner first and foremost. We work with the homeowner and contractors to assure everything works out to everyone’s satisfaction. Iowa West Foundation monies assist SWIPCO to help in home repairs that we may not otherwise be able to accomplish.”

Photos of the completed bathroom project and of the resident; Cynthia Samuel in the updated room. (Photos & info. courtesy SWIPCO Communications Coordinator Chris Parks)

The mission of the Iowa West Foundation is to improve lives and strengthen communities for current and future generations. Partnerships with local casinos Ameristar, Harrah’s, and Horseshoe make it possible for the Foundation to continuously award outcome-focused grants in southwest Iowa communities. Fees from gaming and income from Foundation investments provide funding for programs and projects that benefit the residents of 14 counties in southwest Iowa.

SWIPCO is an equal opportunity provider, employer, and lender.

(Radio Iowa) – The wet spring is expected to impact the pheasant population in some areas of the state, but D-N-R wildlife biologist Todd Bogenshutz says Iowa’s quail should be okay. “I’m getting pretty positive reports on quail and so it could be that our quail numbers will go up,” he says. “I mean you know we’re on the northern fringe of the range so winter really affects our quail numbers probably more than anything and it was a pretty mild winter.”

Bogenschutz says that’s due in part to their background. “You know quail actually are native to the state and so they’re more adapted to our climate here than peasants,” Bogenschutz says.

bobwhite quail

He’ll find out more about both quail and pheasants during the annual roadside counts in August.