A traffic stop at around 6:40-p.m. Wednesday, in Red Oak, resulted in the driver’s arrest for Operating a vehicle While Intoxicated. Red Oak Police say 24-year old Kaylie Louise Hudson, of Red Oak, was arrested at the intersection of Highway 48 and J Avenue. She was charged with OWI/1st offense and held in the Montgomery County Jail on a $1,000 bond.

(Radio Iowa) — Iowa Senator Joni Ernst says negotiations on the next Farm Bill have “taken a turn” in the wrong direction. Ernst is the only Iowan on the committee of House and Senate members assigned to come up with a new five-year Farm Bill by the end of the month. “I don’t think we’re close and, unfortunately, it’s just taken a turn over the last week or so,” Ernst said during an interview with Radio Iowa. “I was very optimistic. I’m going to remain optimistic, but it’s starting to wane right now. We could be looking at a one-year extension.”

That means the current Farm Bill provisions would be extended through 2019, giving congress 12 more months to negotiate.  “Which I don’t want to see,” Ernst said. “I want to see the Farm Bill done.”  The main sticking point is whether to enforce new work requirements for Americans who receive government nutrition assistance — commonly referred to as “food stamps.”

The proposal was included in the version of the Farm Bill that cleared the U.S. House, but not the one that passed the Senate. Ernst says conference committee members have worked through other points of friction. If the debate over work requirements for nutrition assistance continues into 2019, it could occur in a reorganized committee with new members and, perhaps, under Democratic rather than Republican control.
“Let’s get it done now,” Ernst said. “That’s what I keep pushing the chairman to do.”

Ernst spoke with Radio Iowa in the U.S. Capitol, near the Senate floor.

(Radio Iowa) — A newly formed company is planning to do business in a northwest Iowa Tyson Foods plant that was shut down in 2014. Bill Anderson, executive director for Cherokee Area Economic Development, says the Iowa Food Group has acquired the facility. The announcement falls on homecoming week for Cherokee Schools.

“Four years ago, during homecoming week, Tyson closed their doors for the last time. Now, here we sit four years later, during homecoming week, and the plant will be reopening,” Anderson said.  Iowa Food Group plans to start operations in January with 100 workers.

“They will purchase boxed beef and cut that beef into steaks, fajita meat, and things like that. They’ll repackage it and resell it to (grocery stores) and restaurants,” Anderson said. “So, it’s value-added agriculture, I guess you would say. It may be processed by somebody else, as far as being harvested, then they will take it and further process it.”

Iowa Food Group owners hope to eventually employ up to 500 people at the plant. Around 450 people lost their jobs in 2014 when Tyson closed the Cherokee plant in 2014. According to Anderson, more positive economic news is on the way. A local business will break ground on a $2 million expansion project on September 28.

“Foundation Analytical Laboratory, which is here now, will be breaking ground on a new facility. So, it’s another tremendous announcement. We’ve had a great couple of weeks,” Anderson said. Cherokee has a population of roughly 6,000.

Here is the latest Iowa news from The Associated Press at 3:40 a.m. CDT

AMES, Iowa (AP) — Teammates and others who knew an Iowa State University student-athlete who was killed this week while playing golf near the campus shared stories about her and lit candles in her memory. The vigil Wednesday evening to remember 22-year-old Celia Barquin Arozamena drew a large crowd to the Ames campus. Several speakers, including women’s golf coach Christie Martens, talked about the star golfer from Spain. Barquin, an engineering student, was the Big 12 women’s golf champion this year.

NEW YORK (AP) — Even as the White House has seized on crimes committed by those living in the U.S. illegally as proof of the need for an immigration crackdown, agents are increasingly apprehending people with no criminal records at all. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests of noncriminals soared 66 percent in the first nine months of this fiscal year over the same period a year earlier, while apprehensions of criminals have gone up only 2 percent.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Despite criticism by Democrats of Gov. Kim Reynolds for taking campaign contributions from a company that provides Medicaid services, records show two Democratic leaders also accepted money from such companies. The Des Moines Register reports Rep. Mark Smith of Marshalltown accepted multiple campaign contribution from Medicaid vendors, as Sen. Janet Petersen of Des Moines.

MERRILL, Iowa (AP) — Authorities say a young child has been killed in a crash in northwestern Iowa. The Sioux City Journal reports that 6-year-old Ayaan Ibrahn died in the Monday night crash at the intersection of Highway 75 and a city street in Merrill. The Iowa State Patrol says the child was in a southbound SUV driven by 38-year-old Mohamed Abdullahi-Mohamud, of Sioux City, when it went onto the highway shoulder, overcorrected and went into the northbound lanes, hitting a pickup truck nearly head-on.

The Atlantic City Council, Wednesday, voted 4-to 3 to move forward with ways to address the City’s housing needs, by means of using the City EDR (Economic Development Revolving) loan Fund as part of an Infill Housing Initiative. The City’s Personnel and Finance Committee has already endorsed the further exploration of ways to identify a potential buyer or buyers of a home to be built on land owned by the City north of 7th Street or 14th Street.

Mayor Dave Jones was asked by Councilman Dick Casady if City money would be involved. Jones said there would be some to start with, if needed, but it would be paid back. He said “It’s something to get started, no matter what happens.” Jones said they’re looking at a company out of Missouri Valley to construct a modular house.

The buyer — who Jones said would preferably be a working couple — would have to be pre-approved by a lender. The City would supply a vacant lot where a home was previously demolished and the land cleared. The idea is to get the property back on the tax base. Councilman Chris Jimerson, who voted in favor of moving forward, was initially opposed to using City money for a construction zone to a pre-qualified buyer. Councilman Casady expressed similar concerns.

Casady, Councilpersons Hayes and Hartkopf voted against the move. Hayes said not enough has been done to promote the vacant lots the City owns that are available to build on. She said she would prefer if the City stay out of the business of building homes, and give adjacent property owners a chance to purchase the lots if they so desire.

Jones said he’s working on the finer details of the program, but the bottom line is that expensive homes aren’t likely to be built on those lots, so it’s better to offer an alternative, such as the in-fill program.  In other business, the Council, by a vote of 6-to 1, decided to move forward with keeping the speed limit on the northern section of Sunnyside lane at 25 miles per hour, and the southern-most 1,600+ feet 35-mph. The next step is for the City Attorney to review a draft ordinance on the matter, and for a vote on the final draft.

A female passenger on a motorcycle suffered what were described by Police as apparent, non-life threatening injuries, following an accident at around 7:18-p.m., Wednesday, in Atlantic.

The damaged motorcycle after it was removed from the roadway.

Atlantic Police Lt. Devin Hogue said the accident happened as Can-Am Spyder (3 wheel cycle) was traveling west on 7th Street and slowing to turn north onto Laurel Street. When a Buick traveling westbound behind the Spyder slowed down, a black Honda motorcycle ran into the rear of the car.

The unidentified passenger was transported by Medivac Ambulance to the Cass County Memorial Hospital. The driver of the Honda was not injured. Additional information is expected to be released Thursday.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — The cases are strikingly similar: Two talented young women were stabbed to death by male strangers while doing athletic activities alone in normally safe parts of Iowa. But politicians who quickly expressed outrage about the immigrant suspect charged with killing runner Mollie Tibbetts have been silent or more restrained about the white homeless man accused in the death of a college golf star from Spain.

Hours after Cristhian Bahena Rivera was arrested last month in Tibbetts’ death, President Donald Trump declared that the farmhand had killed the “beautiful” young woman because of the nation’s “disgraceful” immigration laws. The president recorded a video citing Tibbetts’ slaying in his case for building a wall on the border with Mexico and adopting other policies intended to keep immigrants from entering illegally.

So far, Trump and many others who followed his lead have not weighed in on the death of Celia Barquin Arozamena, who was attacked Monday while golfing on a course near Iowa State University. The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday on Barquin, who was the Big 12 women’s golf champion this year and a 22-year-old engineering student.

Neither has Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican who tweeted that Tibbetts would be alive if immigration laws were enforced and added: “Leftists sacrificed thousands, including their own, on the altar of Political Correctness.”

King represents Ames, which includes the university, and a part of western Iowa where the suspect accused in Barquin’s death lived as a teenager and young adult in small towns. Court records show that 22-year-old Collin Richards repeatedly received chances to turn his life around but instead kept committing crimes and violated probation again and again.

Richards once threatened to “shoot up” a convenience store where he was caught shoplifting. He dragged his ex-girlfriend out of a home in a headlock, allegedly cutting off her airway and leaving her injured. He got high and stole a pickup truck after wrecking his own car. He burglarized a gas station to steal tobacco and beer and stole from his own grandparents’ home. He was found with an illegally long knife during a traffic stop, and he injured a police officer during a scuffle.

None of that earned Richards prison time or a felony conviction, in part because prosecutors agreed to plea deals that reduced charges to misdemeanors and judges imposed sentences of probation. Richards was sent to prison last year only after he tested positive for methamphetamine and marijuana, failed to complete an anger-management course he started four times and didn’t pay court-ordered fees to a halfway house, court records show.

Even then, the two-year sentence was reduced to about seven months after credit for good behavior and some jail time already served. After his release, Richards was arrested weeks later for public intoxication. Soon, he was living in a tent in a homeless encampment in the woods near the Coldwater Golf Links in Ames. He told an acquaintance that he had an urge to “rape and kill a woman,” police said. He allegedly stabbed Barquin and left her body in a pond near the ninth hole.

Rivera followed a different path, allegedly entering the country from Mexico illegally as a teenager and later getting hired at a dairy farm by providing false identification documents. He was described as a reliable worker. He had no prior criminal record in Iowa before, police say, he followed Tibbetts, a 20-year-old University of Iowa student, in a car while she was running on July 18 in the small town of Brooklyn. He’s accused of killing her and leaving her body in a cornfield. He pleaded not guilty Wednesday, and his trial is scheduled for April.

After Tibbetts’ death, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said residents were angry “that a broken immigration system allowed a predator like this to live in our community.” She also said she might be open to considering a plan to require Iowa employers to use the government’s E-Verify system to check their workers’ eligibility to be in the U.S., although it’s not clear whether that would have prevented the farm from hiring Rivera.

On Tuesday, Reynolds referred to Barquin’s death as “horrific” and “senseless” but said it was premature to determine whether any changes needed to be made to keep young women safe. “As we all learn more about what happened in this senseless tragedy again, we will look for opportunities and ways that we can do better,” she told reporters, according to the Des Moines Register.

On Wednesday, she urged Iowa State fans to wear yellow to Saturday’s football game to honor Barquin.

Officials with Cass County Health Systems in Atlantic report that their phone lines are back up and running, after having been down this morning. They thank you for your patience and understanding.

(Radio Iowa) – Officials with Green Plains Renewable Energy are rejecting a Reuters report this week claiming the company is shutting down a pair of Iowa ethanol plants in Kossuth and Dickinson counties. Jim Stark is Vice President of Media Relations for Green Plains. “We are not closing any ethanol plants,” Stark says. The Reuters report on Monday cited unidentified sources that two plants, in Lakota and Superior, would be closed due to low ethanol demand. Stark says production in Superior is on hold, but the plant’s 46 workers are still there.

“We flex our production capacity up and down depending on market conditions and right now market conditions are not favorable,” Stark says. The Lakota plant is still producing ethanol, according to Stark. Green Plains CEO Todd Becker says ethanol futures prices have dropped to a 13-year low. Becker places part of the blame on RFS waivers granted to oil refineries – cutting ethanol demand.

“Without a doubt, there was demand destruction from the refinery waivers,” Becker said. Becker also cited the trade dispute with China and a lack of federal action on allowing year-round use of E15 for the decline in ethanol demand. Green Plains owns 17 ethanol plants with a production capacity of about 1.5 billion gallons. The Omaha-based company ranks among the top five ethanol producers in the United States.

Relatives in Spain of a star collegiate golfer who was stabbed to death by a stranger on an Iowa golf course say they are distraught. Miriam Arozamena says it was terrible fate that her 22-year-old daughter, Celia Barquin, crossed paths with her killer on Tuesday morning. Collin Daniel Richards has been charged with murder in Barquin’s death.

Speaking from her residence near Torrelavega in northern Spain, Arozamena told broadcaster Tele 5 on Wednesday that her daughter had “such bad luck.” She says Richards “was just going out with the goal of killing.” Police have said the suspect told an acquaintance he wanted to rape and kill someone. Around 500 residents of Torrelavega held a minute of silence for Barquin Wednesday, including her brother Andres who said the family is “heart-broken.”