Red Oak Police report a woman from Cass County was arrested a little before 11-a.m. today (Thursday). 27-year old Michelle Lynn Eden, ofGriswold, was taken into custody on charges that include Harassment in the 3rd degree, and Disorderly Conduct. The charges stem from an incident that occurred Tuesday, at the Red Oak Dollar General Store. Eden was arrested in the 100 block of E. Coolbaugh Street and transported to the Montgomery County Jail, where her cash bond was set at $300.

(Radio Iowa) — Iowa State University is studying ways to use soybean oil instead of petroleum-based oil as a bonding agent in asphalt for making roads. Rolland Schnell, a soybean farmer from Newton, says it’s a tremendous opportunity for Iowa growers, who already lead the nation in soybean production. “If this is commercialized, and it is going to be, about 1.6-billion pounds of petroleum oil is used as a binder product now in asphalt, and that’s a lot of oil,” Schnell says. “There’s no reason to believe that, as this is accepted, a large portion of that could be soybean oil.”

Schnell says the studies are finding soybean oil beats the petroleum-based oil on multiple levels when it’s used to build roads.  “Using the soybean oil, you have a superior product and a cheaper product,” Schnell says. “When I say a superior product, the asphalt that is made with this is much more flexible, it’s much more temperature-tolerant as far as it’s application, and it’s much more environmentally friendly.”

Schnell says using soybean oil in asphalt domestically and internationally would be a huge win, especially in this time of a trade war with China, as the need for more export markets is growing.

(Radio Iowa) — A filmmaker from New York is in Sioux City this week, doing research for his follow up to a documentary made in the late 1970’s. Jay Shapiro’s film will look at the aftermath of Zenith’s decision in 1977 to close their electronics manufacturing plant in Sioux City. Shapiro says “I think I got into it really asking questions about automation and automating jobs away and sort of globalization, these really big words and these big ideas that you can sort of get lost in the theory of them…I stumbled on George’s film just on youtube and found it to be such an incredible document.”

George Lindblade’s documentary was titled “We Didn’t Want It to Happen This Way.” It told the story the 15-hundred Zenith jobs in Sioux City that were shifted to facilities in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mexico. Now, 42 years later, Shapiro is hoping to talk to people who worked at Zenith in Sioux City or who had family members impacted by the closing.

(Radio Iowa) — A Des Moines man is in custody after a high speed and long distance chase. Shortly after 3 a.m. Sunday, a Knoxville policeman stopped a car for an equipment violation. What the officer didn’t know is that the car had been stolen Saturday night in an armed car-jacking in Des Moines. The officer asked two of the three people inside the car to get out, then 22-year-old Daniel Ogden of Des Moines took the wheel and took off. Ogden turned onto Highway 14, with speeds of over 110 miles an hour. The chase moved to Highway 163 where law enforcement twice used stop strips to try to stop the car, with no luck.

The chase ended when Ogden hit a mailbox in a cul de sac in Pleasant Hill. That’s 34 miles away from where the pursuit started. Ogden was treated at a Des Moines hospital, released and taken to the Marion County Jail. The charges Ogden is facing not having a valid driver’s license, speeding, second degree theft and participating in a felony.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — The execution date for a notorious Iowa drug kingpin who killed witnesses and children in 1993 has been scheduled for Jan. 15. Dustin Honken is among five federal death row inmates whose execution dates were announced Thursday by the Justice Department. The announcement came as Attorney General Bill Barr directed federal capital punishment to resume for the first time in nearly two decades.

Honken was convicted at trial in 2004 of five counts of murder during a continuing criminal enterprise and numerous other counts. The jury found that he killed two dealers who were to testify against him during a 1993 investigation, a mother and her two children. Their bodies weren’t recovered for years. Honken, a resident of Britt, expanded his meth-making and distribution enterprise in the following years.

Iowa doesn’t have the death penalty, but the federal jury recommended a death sentence for the children’s murders. Honken’s girlfriend, Angela Johnson, also was sentenced to death but her punishment was reduced to life in prison in 2014.

Officials with the Iowa Judicial Branch report 16 Iowans have applied with the State Judicial Nominating Commission to fill the vacancy on the Iowa Court of Appeals that occurred when Judge Gayle Vogel retired on July 1, 2019. Among the applicants scheduled to be interviewed Monday, August 5th, is Julie Schumacher, District Court Judge, Third Judicial District in Schleswig, and Molly Weber, Assistant Attorney General, Iowa Attorney General’s Office, in Adel. (You can view the entire list of applicants here: https://www.iowacourts.gov/newsroom/news-releases/list-of-applicants-and-interview-schedule-for-iowa-court-of-appeals-vacancy/ )

The commission welcomes written comments from the public about the qualifications of any of the applicants. Comments must be submitted to the commission members via email no later than 5:00 p.m. August 2, 2019 at the email addresses on the State Judicial Nominating Commission website and by email to the Secretary of the commission at sjnc@iowa.gov.

The commission will meet Monday, August 5, 2019, in the Iowa Supreme Court Courtroom on the fourth floor of the Judicial Branch Building to interview the applicants for the vacancy. The public is invited to observe the interviews in the courtroom. The interviews will be live streamed and the videos archived on the Iowa Judicial Branch YouTube channel. Immediately following the interviews, the commission will begin deliberations to select a slate of three nominees from the group of applicants.  Once the commission selects its slate of nominees, the commission will forward those names to the governor. The governor will then have thirty (30) days in which to appoint the new judge.

Cass County Extension is hosting an informational meeting on farmland leasing topics on Wednesday evening, August 7th. The meeting is first in a series of nine across Southwest Iowa, offered by new ISU Extension Farm Management Specialist Patrick Hatting. Landowners and tenants can improve their knowledge of current leasing issues during the annual farmland leasing meetings, being held statewide beginning in late July. More than 80 meetings will be held, led by farm management specialists with Iowa State University Extension and Outreach. Each meeting will take the form of a three-hour workshop designed to assist landowners, tenants and other agribusiness professionals with current issues related to farmland ownership, management and leasing arrangements.

The meeting in Cass County will be held at the Cass County Community Center in Atlantic beginning at 6:30 PM on August 7th. Registration Fee for the meeting is $20/person, or $30 per couple if sharing a leasing resource book. Topics will include trends in land values and rental rates, conservation issues, farm bill topics, and a look at the year ahead. Participants will receive a 100-page workbook with resources such as surveys, example lease agreements and termination forms, and a multitude of other publications that will help answer common questions, and possibly spark new ideas. Pre-registration is required by Monday August 5th to ensure you will get a booklet. You can call the Cass County Extension Office at 712-243-1132 or stop in to get registered.

Melissa O’Rourke, farm management specialist in Northern Iowa with ISU Extension and Outreach says “We’ve seen an increasing need for farmland owners and producer-tenants to have more conversation about the cost of crop inputs as well as reasonable expectations on profit margins. ISU Extension has good resources to help people consider how input costs can be considered in setting cash lease rates, and the workshops will show how those can be used.” According to O’Rourke, the volatility of commodity markets has led to increased inquiries regarding both fixed and flexible cash lease methodologies.

One of the challenges that Iowa landowners and tenants continue to face is the knowledge gap that can exist with modern production agriculture. “We have more aging landowners, and landowners who have never farmed themselves – many of these have inherited land from farming parents,” O’Rourke said. “Together with the producers, we try to educate the parties to understand factors to be taken into account on setting rent and farmland management consideration.”

A listing of all ISU Extension offices hosting meetings statewide is available online, with additional information available through the Ag Decision Maker website at www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/info/meetings.html. The Ag Decision Maker leasing section also provides useful materials for negotiating leases, information on various types of leases, lease forms and newly updated Decision Tools. For more information about the workshop, or to register, visit www.extension.iastate.edu/cass, stop by the Cass County Extension Office, or call (712) 243-1132.

A Council Bluffs man already being held in the Pottawattamie County Jail, was served Wednesday with felony warrants for Lascivious Acts with a Child and Sexual Abuse/2nd offense, involving a child under the age 12/1st offense. 33-year old Jacob Russell Kolhof was read the warrant and returned to the custody of Corrections Staff. 25-year old Jayd Benjamin Speck, of Murray, NE., was brought to the Pott. County Jail, Wednesday, to address a warrant for Credit Card Fraud-Automatic Teller Machine related (amounting to less than $1,500). Speck was being held in the Pott. County Jail on a $2,000 bond.

42-year old Gabriel Angel Rodriguez, of Council Bluffs, was arrested Wednesday night, following a traffic stop on Interstate 80 in Council Bluffs. He was taken into custody for Driving While License Suspended or Revoked. Bond was set at $1,000. And, 53-year old Paul David Goldapp was arrested at around 1:50-a.m. today (Thursday), following a traffic stop on Interstate 29. He was taken into custody for Driving While Barred/Habitual Offender.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — The University of Northern Iowa and University of Iowa are identifying areas that could be trimmed to handle revenue limitations. The Iowa City Press-Citizen reports that officials say in budget documents sent to the Iowa Board of Regents that Northern Iowa expects to receive $3 million less to spend this coming year than last, in part because of stagnant tuition rates and declining enrollment. Northern Iowa plans to cut the number of course sections and reduce the teaching force.

The University of Iowa expects to have $1 million more to spend next year, but officials say that may not be enough to prevent future cutbacks. University officials told the regents about efforts to review activities for elimination. Iowa State officials expect to collect $9 million more in revenue in the coming year.

More State and area news from KJAN News Director Ric Hanson.

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